April 2025 – Scampgrounds

Caspers Wilderness Park — Orange County, California

https://scampgrounds.com/wp-content/themes/osmosis/images/empty/thumbnail.jpg 150 150 gavin gavin https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/99f9cd14e6ca957f921a5ace7d1dcdf0fccde566155f0e4da610ff0b7f10e2b0?s=96&d=mm&r=g April 27, 2025 April 26, 2025

By: gavin

April 27, 2025

Caspers Wilderness Park — Orange County, California
April 21st – 24th 2024 (3 nights)

Located a little over an hour north of Carlsbad and just about twenty minutes inland from Dana Point, Caspers Wilderness Park feels very remote. Situated on over 8,000 acres of wilderness land, the park was originally occupied by the Juanenos, a tribe of Native Americans. Eventually, the city of Orange County purchased the land and the regional park was opened in 1974. The park is notable for its expansive hiking and biking trails, equestrian access, and ranger programs. Pets are not allowed here. Although, if you are feeling lonely, there’s a scurry of California Ground Squirrels here that will keep you company! Otherwise, you can stare up at the sky and watch the large turkey vultures circling.

There are several campgrounds within the park, each with its own focus. The first campground encountered after driving through the entrance gate is Ortega Flats Campground (13 campsites). It’s perfect for those who need to have electrical hookups (otherwise, skip this campground as it’s close to Ortega Highway and gets road noise). The next campground is San Juan Meadow Group Campground (4 group sites), which accommodates large groups of people travelling together. Farther back into the park is our top choice for setting up your travel trailer (or rv/van/tent) – Live Oak Campground. It’s the largest campground in the park with 42 dry campsites. However, threaded water spigots are sprinkled throughout the campground. Additionally, there are restrooms and showers as well as trash receptacles. The next campground, Starr Mesa Equestrian Campground (23 campsites), is for campers with horses. There are horse corrals and horse trails accessible from this campground. The final campground is another group campground, Owl/Quail Group Campground.

We arrived in the early afternoon on a weekday and the campground was very quiet. Our campsite, #36, is spacious and there’s a threaded water spigot across the road. Campsites cost $20/night (or $15/night for seniors 60 years or older or people with disabilities). The Verizon service was very fast during our visit. There’s a central RV dump station at the campground entrance (free for campers). When we arrived we received a wonderful oversized trail map which illustrates all the accessible trails, their difficulty level, and what type of use is allowed (e.g. hiking/horse riding/biking) – similar to a ski area trail map. E-bikes are allowed on the park roads but not allowed on the backcountry trails within the park. There are enough trails to keep one busy for days. There’s also a nature center (closed during our visit) along with interpretive and ranger programs (including the Space Ranger Program with night talks on space and stargazing). For those interested in activities outside the campground, Caspers Park serves as a great base for exploring the beaches and towns of San Juan Capistrano (including the famous Mission) and Dana Point.

We brought our bikes and alternated between hiking in the morning (when the skies were cloudy and the temperatures were cooler) and biking in the afternoon (when it was more sunny and warm). We hiked the moderate trails but only took our bikes on the easy ones to avoid very steep and rocky terrain (along the dry creek bed). Some of our favorite hikes and rides were the Juaneno Trail (hike), East Ridge Trail (hike), Bell Canyon Trail (bike), Mesa Loop Trail (bike), and Cougar Pass (hike). The Juaneno Trail is a good easy first hike in the park – it follows and crosses the San Juan Creek and the four miles round trip from the campground takes about two hours. The longest hike we took (East Ridge Trail from the campground > Cougar Pass > Bell Canyon Trail) was around six miles and took two and a half hours.

We decided to move our campsite on the second morning to the adjacent site #37 for a bit more shade. The ranger was very nice and said it was no issue to move us. Since we were moving anyway, we used the free central dump located next to the park entrance to empty our tanks. The threaded water spigot across the road from site #37 allowed us to fill our Scamp’s freshwater tank using two connected water hoses.

This trip gave us the opportunity to test our new bike rack for the first time. It’s incredibly fast and easy to use and worked out really well. The beauty of this rack is that there is no frame contact (protects the frame) and because there are only two contact points (front and rear tires) it takes only seconds to put on and take off each bike. There are pistons in the arms which makes the process very smooth. Additionally, because of its internal hitch locking mechanism, there’s absolutely no sway while driving. We wanted to test the rack on this trip before using it on a longer adventure to Lake Tahoe this summer. The rack really performed and we look forward to using it in the future.

Caspers Wilderness Park is a gem of a natural area that also has a fantastic campground. We are fortunate that it is so close to where we live. It probably doesn’t come up on the radar for most campers because it is a regional county park. However, as we’ve discovered, even regional parks can have some secrets worth discovering. In this case, over 8,000 acres of beautiful wilderness is hiding within plain sight minutes from the uber popular beaches and cities of Orange County. One of the best ways to find hidden treasure is to use maps on specialized camping websites, like this one. And, once you’ve discovered a regional park you like, odds are that there are other similarly good finds within the same regional park network. In this case, we’ve already scheduled our next OC Park visit in a couple weeks at O’Neill Regional Park – stay tuned!

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Camping Outside (and inside) the Box in Los Angeles

By: gavin

April 5, 2025

Camping Outside (and inside) the Box in Los Angeles
March 22nd – 26th 2024 (4 nights)

What started out as a planned weekend to celebrate my friend’s birthday in Los Angeles, evolved into a trip leading us to discover some hidden campground gems. Los Angeles itself has very few campgrounds for travel trailers. According to The Dyrt, there are no public campgrounds in Los Angeles! One usually has to travel to the distant foothills or the coast to find any places to park a trailer. We found this to be the case too for many large cities we’ve visited, including San Francisco and Portland. However, we did discover two nice campgrounds very close to Los Angeles that provide for beautiful natural experiences!

Valley Village, Los Angeles
We needed a spot to stay overnight in the center of Los Angeles since we planned to hike at Griffith Park on Sunday morning. However, after finding no public campgrounds in the area, we brainstormed possible solutions. We first tried Harvest Hosts (a subscription service which offers free stays at farms, museums, restaurants, etc.) and found nothing. We don’t subscribe to their partner service, Boondockers Welcome, which lists private driveways, so we couldn’t determine if any driveways were available to rent. We also tried Hipcamp, but nothing there either. Since we grew up in Los Angeles, we thought of relatives living in the city who own homes that might be close to the park and have a driveway. We got lucky — a relative living only 6 miles away from Griffith Park in Valley Village (a city in the San Fernando Valley) let us to stay on his driveway for the night!

We had a nice quiet evening at our relative’s home with our Scamp 13’ parked under a beautiful large Magnolia tree. We enjoyed walking the quiet streets of this safe neighborhood in the early evening and morning. Valley Village dates back to the 1930s when workers at nearby motion pictures studios built homes here. The area was known for its apricot trees, orange and walnut groves, peach orchards, and cornfields. It gets hot and dry here in the summer, but fortunately we had good moderate temperatures during our visit in March. We probably wouldn’t stay in the San Fernando Valley during the summer months, but if we did we would definitely bring our portable AC for our Scamp 13’.

So, if you are travelling and need a place to stay where none exist or it’s not economically feasible, you might be surprised to discover you already have a close friend or relative living in the area who may provide you accommodation.

Malibu Creek State Park
Our friend’s birthday celebration dinner was at Paul Martin’s American Grill, a popular restaurant in Westlake Village (a city a bit north of Los Angeles). In reviewing the location and campground map, we found Malibu Creek State Park a beautiful campground located halfway between the ocean and the valley in the Santa Monica Mountains. The campground is only a short drive (about 15 minutes) from Westlake Village but feels worlds away from any city, isolated in a beautiful meadow in the Santa Monica Mountains. Malibu Creek SP exceeded our expectations in many ways. The campground is isolated from the rest of the park, so it’s very quiet. And, it’s located in a beautiful meadow surrounded by tall mountains which light up at sunrise and sunset (reminding us a little of Yosemite). Many television shows and movies have been filmed here throughout the decades, including M.A.S.H. and Planet of the Apes, with trails and signs leading to the filming locations and providing details.

Campsites at Malibu Creek State Park (no hookups) are $45/night. We had campsite #62, which looks out directly over the meadow at the mountains (a great campsite). There’s a central dump, which we were told costs $10 (we didn’t need to use). Instead, we used our Holy Grail Portable Grey Water Tank Solution which effectively allows us to stay off grid for about five days. There was acceptable, but not fast, Verizon mobile service during our stay (decent enough that we didn’t need to activate our Starlink Mini service). We stayed here a couple of nights.

On our first day here, we visited our friends who were displaced from their home in Pacific Palisades due to the historic fire which burned down a significant portion of Pacific Palisades on January 7^th, 2025. Our friends were fortunate in that they quickly found a beautiful beach condo in Malibu which they have rented for a year while their home is being rebuilt. Our friend Bruce gave us a tour of the fire destruction on the Malibu coast and Pacific Palisades. Even though we’ve seen images of the aftermath of the fire numerous times on television, seeing the devastation in person was extremely impactful. Walking through the Palisades village (where we grew up) felt like what we would imagine touring a war zone would be like. Pictures of the scenes can’t adequately describe what it’s like in person. After the tour, my friends joined us at our campsite and we sat outside on the grass under the oak trees and enjoyed each other’s company nibbling cheese, crackers, and sipping cold drinks. While savoring the warm sunny spring day, we noticed a couple of campers having difficulty starting their tow vehicle. A couple of rangers came by to help them start it with their battery jumper, but after a half hour they gave up. I walked over and had a chance to use our Hulkman Smart Jumper Starter for the first time. Being able to deliver up to 2,000 amps peak current, this jumper can even jump 8.5L gas / 6.oL diesel engines! The Hulkman had their tow vehicle started in under a minute! The campers were extremely grateful and the rangers were super impressed!

We spent our second day in the campground and park. The Main hiking trail is up Crags Road, which follows the meandering Malibu Creek. The small Visitor Center is open on the weekends (we only looked in the windows) and features information on the area. We hiked up past the Visitor Center, through Ape City (where scenes from Planet of the Apes was filmed), and onto the M.A.S.H. set (a very popular television series which ran from 1972 to 1983 about a medical unit serving in the Korean War). The weather was perfect and the trails are beautiful. The Crags Road Trail up to the M.A.S.H. set is easy to moderate with only the last short section a bit challenging due to small rock fields (care is needed to prevent twisting ankles). The hike was about 6 miles round trip from the campground, with an 837 foot climb, and took about two hours.

We left Malibu Creek SP feeling refreshed and very satisfied of our visit. The experience felt like being in a very remote location even though it wasn’t too far from any city.

Crystal Cove State Park (Moro Campground)
We learned the street in front of our house was scheduled to be repaved the day we were supposed to arrive home. So, instead of having to deal with parking our Scamp 13’ on the street and leaving it sit overnight, we decided to extend our stay and chose this beautiful location in Laguna Beach to spend the night. Moro Campground (Crystal Cove SP) is usually booked solid year round, but we got lucky when a premium hookup campsite (#8) opened at the last minute on just the day we needed. The premium sites are pricey at $75/night + reservation fee, which comes out to about $83/night (Electric / Water). We normally don’t pay anywhere near this amount, but did want to try this campground as it has an excellent reputation and is in a beautiful area. The central dump here is free (and we were surprised the park has 3 dump stations for just 28 designated RV and trailer campsites!). The Verizon mobile service here was very fast during our stay.

The rangers at this campground are very strict on arrival time (we’ve only seen this strict adherence to the time once before – at Pismo Beach North Beach Campground) – check in is at 3 p.m., and if you show up any earlier (like we did), you are directed to park in one of the beach parking lots (we parked for free at Rock Ridge Beach parking lot and had lunch in our Scamp 13’ and then took a walk along the bluffs overlooking Crystal Cove SP). The campground itself isn’t particularly notable (though some of the front sites have ocean views) as it’s high up on a bluff away from the ocean and the sites themselves are close together.

The main draw of Crystal Cove SP are the beautiful beaches and bluff trails. There’s also the historic district along the beach featuring beach bungalows (which can be rented) built in the 1930’s. There’s a parking lot above the beach and one can either ride the free shuttle to the beach or walk down through a tunnel. One of the beach bungalows (#13) was featured in the 1988 movie “Beaches” with Bette Midler. The bungalows each have tags that have a number and the name of the bungalow. The Shake Shack restaurant sits up a flight of stairs from the beach. It’s usually crowded with tourists and locals forming lines to buy their popular milk shakes (they also serve hamburgers, fries, …). If one tires of the beach, there’s a free trolley which runs through downtown Laguna Beach (plenty of shops and eateries).

Conclusions
Sometimes a short trip can be configured to become a fun adventure. When no locations to stay at seem apparent, sometimes out of the box thinking can be rewarding. You may have a close friend or relative who can accommodate a night’s stay or there may be private alternatives for parking your camper. Exploring campground maps, like the one available on The Dyrt, can also provide ideas and alternatives for new campsites. In this trip, we probably wouldn’t have gone out of our way to stay in Los Angeles without the need to attend a friend’s birthday party. But, it forced us to keep an open mind and find options where none seem to exist and we ended up finding some hidden campground gems. So, throw away the box, and let your thinking carry you to new horizons!