Southern California Vacation 2026 - Day 7 - All Day at the Beach

This is day 7 of our vacation to Southern California. When we were initially planning this trip we talked about going into San Diego this day for some sight seeing. Or maybe even a trip to Sea World. But as the trip got closer I rethought this day. I realized we wouldn't be in the mood for any sort of sight seeing by the SEVENTH day of our trip. So instead I planned for us to stay at the beach the whole day. Beach would be the entire plan. 

We spent the night at San Elijo State Park. This is an awesome place because the campground is right by the beach. The other boundary of the park is a little less awesome. The Pacific Coast Highway runs right along the east side of the park. So there is a lot of traffic going for a lot of the night. And on the other side of the highway are several train tracks. The commuter rail line for the Coaster is over there as well as some freight lines. And those freight lines don't stop at night. There were trains running all night. They sounded like they were going right through our camp between my tent and Charlotte and Lydia's tent. 

We still slept well, but it wasn't exactly a peaceful night. 

I woke up around 6:00 and had to go to the bathroom. I decided I wasn't really interested in crawling back into my sleeping bag so I went and sat on a bench on the stairs down to the beach. It was really nice to just take in that view so soon after waking up.

I loved how the white part of the water as the waves retreated. 

After a little while I went back to the campsite. Brandon had gone grocery shopping the night before. He had bought milk and cereal so I found that and set things out for the kids to have breakfast as they woke up. We'd had our camping stuff with us in the lower part of the vans trunk area. We hadn't really been able to access it all until we got to the campsite and got it all out. One thing I was super happy to have was our big tote full of all our camping kitchen supplies. It was like unlocking bonus content. We had knives and a cutting board again! Trash bags! Tin foil! The camp stove! One thing we did not have was bowls. So we ate our cereal in cups. But that was fine. 

Here we are at breakfast. You can see everyone's wet clothes from the night before "drying."  The morning was so misty that everything was still wet. 

Brandon had also bought donuts. Those hadn't been on the list and Derrick had been very confused why Brandon had bought them. Brandon was like, "because they are on sale and this is a vacation."

Lydia asked if it was okay if she got in her swimming suit and went to the beach right away. I was like, "sure. That's the entire plan for the day."

So soon all the kids were getting in their swimming suits. I made them all put on sun block even though it was still foggy. Then we all went down to the beach. I'm not sure it was even 8:00 when we first got down there. 


The kids were playing on the beach immediately. I set up a little area and tried to sleep on my towel. 

Lydia kept bringing me cool things to show me. This was a bunch of barnacles. 

Charlotte started building a sand castle, but the waves were coming close to it so she started building a wall of rocks to protect it. 

Here I am with my beach hair. One thing I remember from the southern california trip 17 years ago is how great my hair looked. It seemed to have so much more body than it does in dry Utah and Idaho. The same thing was happening again. 

Here's a shell that still had an occupant. 

It was really cool looking. Lydia threw it back in the ocean after she showed it to me. 

Here's Charlotte's progress on the wall to protect her sand castle. 

I went back up to the top of the cliff to go to the bathroom. On my way back to the stairs that led to the beach I took a picture of the path. This path was about 30 feet long. It went from the campground road to the top of the stairs. It was lined by these flowers the whole way. 

Here are the kids playing on the shore some more. Charlotte had a bag that she was using to carry rocks to her wall. The other three were out playing in the shallow areas. 

I realized I was pretty tired and I was unsuccessful at sleeping on my towel. (There were little jumping flies on the sand that were a little annoying.) So Brandon stayed down with the kids and I went up to the campsite and took a nap. I was asleep for about two hours. That was EXACTLY what I needed. 

When I woke up I checked on everyone from the top of the stairs. I was surprised to see how much the tide had gone out. My kids had been at the beach for about 3 hours by this point. I knew they would be getting hungry soon. So rather than rejoin them on the beach I went back to the campsite and started making lunch.

We'd eaten through most of the original food that we'd bought in Idaho. But we still had pasta and sauce that we'd brought all the way from Idaho. That meal may sound so dinky and dumb, but it's one of our camping staples. I knew the kids would love it after a long morning of playing at the beach. So I got out the camp stove and started boiling water for the noodles. Here I am cooking in my swim suit.

The water took a while to boil so I went around taking some pictures. 

A lot of the other campers had packed up and left. Here's what the campgrounds across the road looked like. I was really confused by the campsites though. When Brandon and I were here 17 years ago the beach side campgrounds had a side walk running between the campsites and the cliff fence. I vividly remember it because it felt like EVERYONE was walking up and down that side walk by our campsite. We were in the northern part of the campground this time and last time I think we were more south. So I just assumed that the sidewalk must start farther down. But later we checked and there WAS NO SIDEWALK. This place felt like nothing had changed, but at some point in the last 17 years they removed a whole sidewalk. It was kind of crazy to realize that. 

And here's what our campsite looked like from the other side of the road. I liked how big these campsites were. We had room for two tents, a canopy, a fire ring, and our van. And we were still about 10 feet back from the road. 

And look how close we were to the bathroom. When the kids were little I would always try to pick the site closest to the bathroom. I don't always do that now, but it's still a good rule of thumb. And the beach access was right across from the bathroom so we were really close to that. 

I finished cooking the noodles and then mixed in the sauce and some shredded cheese with most of the noodles. (Some kids like plain noodles so I made sure to separate those out.) I made sure we had lots of water bottles availible because I was pretty certain no one was drinking from the few bottles I'd taken down to the beach that morning. Then I went across to the cliff edge and hollered down. The kids and Brandon heard me and I yelled, "I have lunch for you!"  And pantomimed eating. They got the message and came up to the campsite. 

They had no idea that they'd been playing on the water for 4 hours. Lydia told me it had felt like an hour. 

Everyone gobbled up their food. It tasted so good after all that playing. I made sure everyone drank at least one bottle of water. We have skittles flavored mix ins that they could add to the bottles. Those always make it easier to drink enough water. 

I think we had a few other things with lunch, but pasta and sauce was the main event. 

My phone battery died so when we went back to the beach I didn't take it with me. Brandon stayed behind and cleaned up everything for me. He also found an outlet at the bathroom and charged my phone for me. That was really considerate of him. 

I can't remember exactly what I did after lunch. I think I hung out on the towel and watched the kids. Honestly the ocean was just so mesmerizing that I was probably just zenned out staring at it for a while. 

Brandon was back with my phone so I was able to take pictures again. Here's the progress on Charlotte's rock wall. 

Here are the kids playing with a tide pool. Derrick spent hours just watching the water flow between rocks. He loves watching water so this was a great day for him.

The girls had a pretty elaborate sand castle/sand hole situation.

At some point the day had finally warmed up enough that I was ready to get into the water. I had a lot of fun jumping in waves with the kids.  We'd wait for a wave to come right up to us and then jump into it and get swirled around. It was so fun! I was out there with them for a long time. Then the tide seemed to start coming back in and the water felt a little more violent every time it slammed into me. That wasn't as fun so I came back to the beach. 

I was trying to keep the kids sun screened up, but I knew they were probably getting burned. Brandon fell asleep on his back and I knew his whole front was going to be burned. I joked that even the inside of his nose was getting burned. But he's an adult with his own opinions so I tried not to micromanage his sunscreen use (or lack there of). 

Me on the other hand, we I have vitiligo and my non-pigmented skin, that I call my "baby skin" can burn pretty quick. Also I just wasn't interested in living with a bad sunburn. So I went back up to the campground and found my hoodie. I spent a lot of time sitting on the beach all covered up by my hoodie and a towel. 

Here are the kids playing in the sand. 

Here's how they looked from the front. 

They had some fun sand castles going. 

They were pretty focused. 

And here I am still hiding from the sun. I spent a lot of time just staring at the water. I usually have a thousand thoughts going through my head. But today it was like, "No thoughts, just ocean." It was so nice to just think and do nothing. 

Later I got up and played in the sand with the kids. 

There were some pretty cool creations. 

The water started to come up to the level it had been at in the morning. 

No one really talked about it, but I think we were all waiting to see what would happen to Charlotte's rock wall/castle when the waves hit it. 

When the waves did come up that wall didn't stand a chance. It disintegrated pretty quick. 

I kind of thought we'd call it a day when the rock wall collapsed, but no one was ready to be done yet. And really we were in no hurry. Brandon and I sat side by side. I told him that when the kids were younger I would have been trying to figure out how to manage the inevitable melt down that would happen when they left the beach. One of us would have had to make sure dinner was ready. We'd have to have already figured out the shower token situation. We'd have to get the kids off the beach, get them showered off, feed them, and put them to bed all in about 30 minutes. And they would still probably all melt down in tears at some point in that process. 

For so much of the kids' younger years I'd always lamented the fact that everything, no matter how fun it was, always ended in crying. 

But now they were older and I knew that there would be no tears. Sure they would probably be exhausted from the long day at the beach, but they wouldn't have complete melt downs over it. They could shower on their own. And they could wait for dinner. And they probably weren't going to go to bed right anyway.

That was a good feeling. I was like, "We did it!"

Here's Charlotte surveying the damage to her creation.

And then she went back to the water and played some more. 

Eventually Brandon and I realized that we probably should get something going back up at camp. We the evening was getting later and we would all be hungry soon. So Brandon went up to camp to start getting dinner ready. He was up there about 30 minutes before the kids and I decided it was time to go up. 

We were having chili and hot dogs for dinner. I imagined that Brandon would already have the chili cooking on the stove and we'd be able to eat soon after getting to camp. Instead the stove was no where in sight and he was still trying to light a fire. I was like, "what have you been doing for 30 minutes?"

But no one was crying so it wasn't that big a of a deal. I made sure the kids drank more water and then I went to find the shower token machine. I had to really think though the math for the tokens. The tokens were each 50 cents and would give us a two minute shower. The machine only took $5, $10, and $20 bills. I decided to get $10 worth of tokens. That would give us 20 tokens or 40 minutes. Each person could have 3 tokens or a 6 minute shower. I gave Charlotte and Lydia the extra two tokens because they had the longest hair. 

All my math was slightly pointless though. Charlotte and Lydia just decided to share the shower stall so they could have more time to wash their hair. And then Veronica's was broken and just gave her unlimited shower time. But did work for me, Derrick, and Brandon. 

Speaking of Brandon. He was still trying to get dinner ready while the rest of us were taking turns in the showers. And I was starting to get more and more concerned. He'd seemed to forget that we even had chili - even though he'd bought the big can the day before. When I finally asked him about the can he just opened it up and set it in the fire ring near the fire. That got the job done, but it seemed kind of out of character for my normally methodical husband. 

But dinner was eventually ready and we sat down to eat. I think Veronica's face in this picture is the most accurate. The day had been great, but everyone was feeling the effects from a whole day in the sun. Everyone was staring to feel their sun burns and they were also feeling really cold. We had aloe vera (that I bought at Bear Lake for $15 after our last all day beach adventure ended in sunburns) and were slathering that on. Brandon had also bought an aerosol aloe vera the day before at Walmart.

Brandon started shivering and he told me, "I feel like I'm going to cry." And then I was like, "Wait, he's not feeling well! That's what's going on."  Brandon rarely gets sick and I've never seen him slow down on a camping trip. It hadn't even crossed my mind that he wasn't feeling well and that was why he was acting so odd. 

I told him I was pretty certain he had heat exhaustion. I made sure he drank more water and gave him ibuprofen. He hadn't had a shower yet so I told him to go take one. When he came back I gave him melatonin and told him to go to bed. I'd take care of everything else. He went right to bed and slept really well and felt much better in the morning. 

Even though Brandon was having a rough time the other kids were doing fine. For some reason Lydia didn't want to wear pants. I think it was because her legs were super sensitive from the sun burns on them. It was very dark by this point so she was just running around in her underwear. It was kind of funny. It gave me flashbacks to when she was three and was in her underwear a lot. 

Derrick spent a lot of time at the edge of the fence. He was hoping to see a train go by. And he was able to see a few. 

Charlotte and Veronica were tired and went to bed soon after Brandon, but they weren't crying so that was a win there! 

I stayed up with silly Lydia and patient Derrick for while. I got the campsite somewhat cleaned up. Lydia eventually went to bed. Derrick and I stayed up standing around the fire for a while. We hadn't had room in our van to bring camp chairs so we were just standing. Then Derrick got tired and went to bed. I put out the fire with water from our big water cooler. And then I went to bed. 

I also took this picture of a halo around the moon. 

And here's the silhouette of a palm tree with stars behind it. 

It had been such a great day. I'm so glad that I'd booked the campsite for two nights. It was wonderful to just be there the whole day. We didn't have to worry about driving there or parking or really much at all. It was perfect.