CampsiteScanSan Diego Beach Camping: Which Sites Sell Out and Which Don’t
San Diego County has four state beaches you can camp at, and more people who want a site than all four can hold. We check every one of them ourselves, several times a day. Here is what each one is actually like, which sell out fastest, and what to do about it.
Everything below books through ReserveCalifornia.
Silver Strand: an RV lot between two waters
Silver Strand sits on the narrow strip of sand that joins Coronado to Imperial Beach, with the Pacific on one side and San Diego Bay on the other. The camping is a paved lot for self-contained RVs, so there are no tent sites and no hookups, and you are a short walk from either shore. It is the closest campground to downtown San Diego by a wide margin, which is most of its appeal, and it tends to keep more room than the other three.
San Elijo: the one everyone wants
San Elijo sits on the bluff above the surf in Cardiff, close enough to Encinitas that you can walk to a taco shop from your tent. It has a mix of tent and RV sites with hookups, hot showers, and stairs down to the beach. It is booked out on summer weekends months ahead, and it is the park our own users fight over hardest in the county.
South Carlsbad: the same idea, a few miles north
South Carlsbad is rows of sites along the bluff edge with stairs down to a long sandy beach. It is bigger than San Elijo, which helps a little, and it is the better of the two for families with small kids because the beach at the bottom is wider and gentler. It sells out on the same weekends for the same reasons.
San Onofre: surf first, everything else second
San Onofre, at the Orange County line, is different from the other three. The Bluffs campground is a strip of primitive sites above Trestles, one of the best known surf breaks in the state. There are no showers, sites sit close together, and you hear the freeway at night. Surfers do not care, and neither will you if you came for the waves. The San Mateo campground sits a short walk inland with more shade, hot showers and quieter nights. San Onofre also has far more sites than the other three, which is why it usually has a better shot at last-minute availability.
Getting a site once it looks booked
Two things actually work. Book the morning the six-month window opens, signed in and ready before the release time. Or watch for a cancellation: sites come back onto ReserveCalifornia at all hours as bookings fall apart, and they get taken again within minutes. Our beach camping guide rates all four of these parks by how often they sell out, updated from our own checks, and if San Diego is full for your dates, Doheny and Crystal Cove in Orange County are under an hour up the freeway.