San Clemente State Beach

$25.00 Off-Season - $35.00 Summer Months ($50.00 for full hook-ups)

Best place to stay for South OC Surf. Clean Spots, Coin operated showers and a great beach break right out in front of the campsites.

Surf: Short walk to T-street and short drive to Lowers.

Note: The receipt that you get for paying for your site gets you into any state beach the following day, so plan on hanging out the following day as well.

* My three star statement below only pertains to the summer weekends, it can get pretty zoo'ed out.

This campground is in a great location on a bluff. It's a short, steep walk to the excellent San Clemente State Beach. Walk one way and you can get to the pier in downtown San Clemente, and the other way is Richard Nixon's old home.

There are dry and hookup sites here. The hookups are a little closely packed but the sites in the low 60's do have an ocean view. We stayed in a dry site, these are much more spacious and well separated. Our site (#81) was large and we had ocean views over some of the other sites. The bluff top sites are excellent, with #88 winning the "best $35 I ever spent" award. 82, 83 and 85 are pretty incredible too.

My only ding (making this maybe a 4.75 star review) were the showers. Clean and modern but lukewarm water. We were here in January in some of the wettest, chilliest weather SoCal ever experiences and tepid showers were miserable.

Apart from that ding this really is an amazing little retreat of space and openness in the otherwise crowded Orange County coast.

This is one of the best! None of the sites are oceanfront as the campground is up on a cliff, but it’s just a short walk to watch some amazing sunsets! There’s also a dog friendly hiking path that leads down to Calafia Beach where you can hop on the pedestrian/bike path to the pier (no dogs allowed on the beach though). The full hookup sites are quite spacious. Bathrooms were clean and the camp hosts were friendly. There isn’t laundry available in the campground, but there’s a nice laundromat about 5 minuets away. Firewood is available for purchase at the ranger station and the sites have fire pits. Overall, we really loved this spot. The state park isn’t crowded at all compared to some other spots on the California coast. Verizon and ATT both worked well without the cell booster. There’s also plenty of grocery shopping options in town, maybe a 10-20 minute drive.

Most of the beach camping in San Diego and orange counties is a glorified parking lot. SCSB is a nice big park up on the bluff. The beach is a steep walk away. The park is great to just cruise around on a bike. Our daughter loved playing with kids that were camped near us. It’s a family vibe. We stayed up next to our fire past the quiet hour and were not hassled. The trash cans we so close we didn’t use our outdoor can. The horseshoe pits were right next to us. We didn’t use the bathrooms or showers here so we can’t comment on that.

While there's nothing wrong with this campground, I had to deduct a star because $65 a night with no ocean view is kind of ridiculous. Yeah, I know it has full hook-ups but I am not sure we could ever use that much power/water/sewer to make it worth the price. On the plus side, the beach here is gorgeous! The soft sand stretches for miles in either direction and you can easily walk all the way into town where they have a bustling pier and grassy picnic area near the beach. Next time, I think we'll try for a spot in the dry camping area instead.

This is a great camp ground full hook ups over priced $65 a night, dry camp price good $35. The beach is a long hike away NO dogs a loud but in camp ground. Bathrooms are great clean but when we where here shower token machines where not working and front gate did not give out tokens only one machine worked in full hook up area why ? This is just my thinking on showers just include it with camp site price and skip the machines ( tokens/ quarters) You will have a little road noise.

This campground was very well maintained, bathrooms and showers were very clean. It was relatively quiet in the evenings and early mornings. Our campsite was clean,spacious, and conveniently close to the restrooms. Our children had great time riding around the trails on their bikes within the campground.The beach was about a 10/15 minute walk down a steep bluff. Make sure you take everything you need with you, as walking back up the steep bluff is exhausting. The beach was not very crowded, which is a plus in the summer. The Lifeguards were extremely nice and helpful. Only disadvantage was there are a lot of skunks roaming around the campground. so make sure you dispose of your trash and store all food in plastic containers. We cannot wait to camp here again.

New to RVing, Just purchased our TT in December 2019. San Clemente was our 2nd trip for Valentine's Weekend. Easy to get to, full hook ups was a pull-thru paved slot which is great for newbies. Everything was clean and well maintained. Great for families, lots of kids playing around and riding bikes. My kids loved the hike down to the beach. Only gripe I had was that you could not see the ocean from our site and I think from most full hook-up sites. The tent sites or dry camping have the best views of the ocean.

Great place to stay for a few days. Some road noise from the 5 freeway but you don’t even notice it after a while. The northeastern spots have a slight view of the ocean which makes sunsets a great sight. All sites are pull-through with full hookups. Will stay here again.

Booked a last minute reservation here and loved our stay.