South Carlsbad State Beach

The good; location, views, bathrooms/showers, beach access, clean beach.
The Bad; Over priced, VERY difficult to get a site (esp on the beach side), traffic and train noise, allot of theft (lock up your stuff), on the weekends there is allot of partying going on. Just sayin', now they charge for the dump station but that's CA taxation for ya!

You have got to stay here best place and no more walking up and down the stairs from h*ll if you stay at this end. no hookups at the end but dump tank is 100 feet away bathrooms are pretty good.

best thing dog beach at this end and wildlife reserve with a channel you can actually surf when tide goes out. walking to stores and neat little shops and a high end restaurant also.

train goes thru several times buts its Amtrak, so its fast and gone in minutes.

Coming from Colorado, this was a really magical experience for me. I was in site 183, and it is right up against the cliff. The site seemed a little bigger than some of the surrounding sites, and had convenient access across the road to bathrooms and a shower (with tokens $1/4minutes). Sometimes I worry, being this close to facilities, about foot traffic and noise, but I don't think there are many spots in this park where those factors would be significantly different, and the convenience of having them so close meant I didn't have to fill up my waste tanks. It is close to the end of the park. So less trailers moving in and out and there is an entrance to the beach nearby.

I will say, I hadn't expected it to be such a rocky beach. Be sure to check the tide forecast, so you can catch the two hour windows of sandy beach once or twice a day at low tide.

Great, clean campground. Helpful park staff. Friendly neighbors. All around, I loved it!

We turned up 40min before 2pm check in and were turned away despite there being free sites. Do not get there before 2pm because they are very strict about this. They told us it would be easy to park along the beach a few miles down which was not possible. We ended up parking at the outlet mall which cost my husband more money.
Our site was road side which was very loud.
Sites are all quite large.
Clean flush toilets and coin operated showers.
Potable water is free but its $15 to dump.

Used to camp here as kids, we remember it being a lot more strict. The park has great views, especially the premium spots. The only issue we had were people speeding passed our camp. Some literally at freeway speeds. For a camp filled with little children, this ruined the campground for us. The camp should either patrol more or install some form of speed bumps.

At first glance, this campground has some negatives. There's the busy road that runs past, the lack of privacy at sites, and the fact that with no power hook-ups you will inevitably be subjected to the roar of your neighbor's monster generator powering their TV/coffee maker/microwave (it's called camping people). But then there's the view. Perched high on a bluff overlooking the ocean, it's the view straight out onto the Pacific makes this a 5-star campground. We spent our four day stay gazing at the ocean and strolling up and down the beach. The sound of the waves was even almost enough to drown out the neighbor's generator :) Oh yeah, and don't bother with the non-ocean side sites. Not at all worth it in my opinion.

After coming up from staying at San Elijo SB for a week, we didn't think it could get better, but in many ways South Carlsbad has many things better than San Elijo. We managed to find a last-minute Oceanfront site for 5 nights Sun-Thur and cancelled our reservations at Crystal Cove SP so we could be even closer to the ocean.

1. Trains that run along the nearby tracks don't blast their horn nearly as much as when we stayed at San Elijo.
2. The beach and campground during the week is far less busy than San Elijo.
3. Access is much easier, with a far wider entry gate. If you're heading north into the park, there's plenty of places along the road to pull-over and wait until 2PM to check-in, and there's an easy U-turn just past the park to head back south for the right turn into the park.

However, one downside is that the beach isn't nearly as nice as San Elijo, where South Carlsbad is far rockier and shorter. While the beach condition can change daily, for the first couple of days it was quite difficult to walk on the beach due to the large rocks. Thankfully for the last two days it cleared up and there was more sand.

Also, the Verizon towers nearby were problematic, occasionally bouncing between 5 bars of LTE and 2-3 bars of 1x. Thankfully, T-Mobile service was excellent at a constant 5 bars of LTE, and it served well as fail-over.

Overall, it was a fantastic stay, and really can't complain about having the gorgeous oceanfront views. Would love to stay for much longer next winter - hopefully Verizon sorts out their issues in the future!

I've stayed here several times. It's great for what it is: A beach-and-highway adjacent campground. Sites and facilities are always tolerably clean. The campground is almost always full, the weather is almost always great, and the sunsets are almost always spectacular. Campers here regularly cram quite a bit of equipment onto relatively small sites, so it can feel a bit cramped. Also, as others has noted, I've been near some sites where the campers have been over-served.

The focus of this spot is the beach. You can ride a bike or run on the path along the road, too. There are surfers everywhere, and it’s great entertainment. As far as the campground:
Bathrooms and showers are clean. Showers take tokens, which is an inconvenience, but they are easily obtained. The water is hot and pressure is good. No soap in the bathroom. Ick.
The campsites are sandy, but pretty level. It says the limit is 35ft, but we saw some even bigger rigs fit right in. We reserved on ReserveCalifornia, and when I reserved, t showed that there were not many available spots. So we took a 35$ Spot (on the other side of the road) for 2 days, then moved to the only spot that was available for the weekend. Weird, there were lots of empty spots over the weekend. And we had to pay a 7.99 fee for each reservation. So I’m not sure about other times of the year but in December before Christmas you should not have any problem finding a good spot here . I gave four stars for noise because you can hear the highway sound quite clearly .

We wanted to be by the beach - the view is forever although through a chain link fence due to the steep bluff you are camping on. There are a few beach access stairs and dirt ramps for walking down.

Site 16 was pretty private with a hedgerow on either side so you couldnt see the people in the sites next to you. Was also across from the lavatory/shower combo.

We liked the campground. The view was awesome. Mostly quiet and very clean. Nice little store for supplies.

Only minor complaints- Need tokens for showers ( which is ridiculous- why not just allow quarters). And NO soap in the bathrooms! What is it about CA campgrounds not having soap????

I recommend this campground highly! Get the waterfront site! Relax and enjoy the view!