Pismo State Beach
Camping in March in Pismo is always a bit of a gamble due to the usually cold weather, but this time, we got lucky. The weather was just beautiful for all three days we were here.
I think we walked to the beach a total of five times on this trip, with the girls feeling like they got all the beach time they wanted to get.
One beach visit of note was on Saturday. After lunch, we decided to walk from the campsite all the way to downtown Pismo for some ice cream. As we strolled along the beach, we noticed larger and larger groups of people. At first, I was a bit defiant. I thought, “Well, maybe it’s just the perspective and there won’t be so many people near the pier.” Then as we got closer, we had to change plans as the number of people just got exponentially larger. We settled for slurpees that tasted like the nectar of the gods.
We’ve been to Pismo half a dozen times in the past few years, so there were no surprises on this trip. But there’s a reason why we keep coming back, which is that the beach is warm, the sand is fine, and the water is warmer than near the Bay Area. It’s wonderful here.
What I Learned:
Each site is a pull through site, but it can only fit my truck plus a trailer that is around 25 feet or so.
I put my camera on a time-lapse and the girls had a blast posing for the camera as it took photos every 5 seconds or so.
At the beach, we competed in the “olympics” at various events like the long jump, balance beams, and spinning jumps. The girls loved it!
I’m getting my photography mojo back. There were some shots I took on this trip that made me think that maybe I was rediscovering my joy for photography.
This was the first trip after I replaced the broken table with the new mahogany table. It worked beautifully.
Camp Review:
We stayed at site 38, and it’s location was central, which meant nothing was too far away. But what it really meant was that it was probably the loudest site, given there were lots of loud people around us and that was a drag. If we were in a tent (and not a trailer), it would have been really annoying.
It was especially annoying due to a neighbor camper, who not only played inappropriate music out loud, but they sang Karaoke with the volume turned to 11.
Each site has a huge amount of grass space to play. I was really amazed at how much space each site got. Though, there are very few trees or bushes—there was very little privacy.
I’m definitely not coming back to the same site. It’s obvious to get the west-most campsites, since many of those have a private trail to the beach. In the future, even if it farther, I’d rather get spots on the edges of the campsite to get a higher probability of quieter sites.