Camping at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point California

A little over 6 months ago, I woke up and logged onto my laptop first thing in the morning in hopes of scoring some sweet beach camp spots here in Southern California. What I didn't realize at the time was that the rest of the world was probably up at midnight getting the best sites. We were left with three (one by accident) 2 two night reservation trips for Sunday and Monday nights in August. It was really all I could grab and I crossed my fingers that I didn't book some kind of unusable spot next to the toilets or something. Well... we just complete our first trip to Doheny State Beach and it was fantastic!

Despite the undesirable dates and literally the last available site, we pulled into site number 17 at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point and spent two days of sand, fun, and sun, as we cooked out, camped, and played all day long.



This was the baby's first trip to the beach and we kept her under a nice beach umbrella with side flaps and a full body swimsuit if she went out in the sun. She seemed to have a good time. Her brother was in the sand, surf, and enjoyed riding his bike, jumping waves, and building sand castles.

Although the camp site didn't have hookups for the RV, we had plenty of lanterns for lighting and a propane stove for cooking hot meals. Our 21 foot RV just fit with our small car pulled right up against it. The site came with plenty of open space and a tall, large, fire ring with a cooking grill that could fold over the top.



There are showers and restrooms on the premises and campsites that are literally right on the sandy beach. I think we will try to score one of the beach sites for next year.



There is a section of beach set aside for surfing that seemed to get some decent waves, but we were a little disappointed that there wasn't much waves in the rest of the ocean for the boogie boards.



On the flipside, it made it nice to swim or paddle board in the ocean, unless you play a little too close to the waves and get it right in the face like my husband and son did here!

If you get bored, you can walk or bike over to the section of beach where you can rent bikes or other pedaling vehicles, play volleyball, or buy food from the walk up or sit down restaurant right on the beach which also has beer and wine.







Hubby and I agreed that this would be our hangout once the kids got a little older and wanted to hit the surf on their own.



We loved Doheny State Beach Campground. We are going to try to score a nice August campsite again next year right on the sand so we can enjoy our wine to a view of the waves by the moonlight. I cannot wait! We are doing another beach camping for 2 nights with the RV soon.



Money Saving Tip - TOW your car into camp if you drive a car and an RV like we did. Then you SAVE $15 per night for a towed car vs. driving it in. We don't have a way to strap the second child's carseat in the RV and want a car to get around without the RV so we drive the car as well but they charge you for cars that are not towed so we'll be hitching it up before entering next time!