Not Quite Great Enough!
I wanted to give five stars to this park. It has a lot going for it - right on the Pacific ocean; near the bike path, lots of great spots with full hook-ups. What's not to like?
But every time i was close to five stars, I hesitated. No Wi-fi. Check. High Prices. Check. And worst of all, incredibly loud planes overhead - check, check and check.
Some would probably downgrade the park even more for these lacks. Perhaps I'm being too generous. Of course some would just overlook the negatives, and bask in the fact of - but it's on the beach! As if that erases everything else.
So I'll stick to the four stars. You'll have to judge whether the positives outweigh the negatives. I think they do and I'm glad we went and yes, I'd do it again. But with full knowledge of what we were getting in to.
The park is maintained by the County of Los Angeles and, as a result, there are no discounts in pricing, and a lot of rules. Our experience was that they are a bit more flexible on rules as they know that Dockweiler is a party beach. There are fire pits on the beach and it's common for teens and young adults to come there on the weekends to frolic and have fun.
The RV Park is next door to the beach's parking lot and shares the beach and bike path. I think our weekend was probably pretty typical in that there were groups of campers gathering to party over the weekend nights so the evening's quiet doesn't really occur until sometime after midnight or 1 am. On Friday night we had a fair amount of rain which cut short the partying, but they made up for it on Saturday night. Not that it was scary or dangerous - most of the parties were families with kids so it felt like just a good time without any edge to it that alcohol can sometimes bring.
Each space has a charcoal grill and a set of picnic benches which is a nice touch. There are also bathrooms and showers and a laundry facility, and enough grass for our dog to walk on (plus dog stations with baggies). The spaces are fairly generous in size although there are no pull-through sites. In the middle of the park there is an open bathroom facility which can be used by folks on the bike path. I opted not to bother with this restroom as the park's were opened by keypad and seemed probably better maintained than the public one.
I was a bit surprised that so many locals come to this RV Park although we are locals ourselves. But we were doing it because we wanted to show off our new RV to our local family and this was the closest and nicest RV Park around. Other locals do it just to be on the beach. We saw a fair number of rental RVs there.
We were there on the last weekend in April, just before the start of the summer season when it becomes harder to get weekend spots. There are approximately 100 or so spaces and it's over three long rows with a turnaround in the middle making six blocks. What they've done is assign motorhomes to three of the blocks and trailers/fifth wheels to three of the blocks but alternated them - the first row nearest the beach is priced at $65 a night (one section is motorhomes, one is trailers), the middle row at $60 a night and the back row is $55 a night. We paid for a site in the middle row but could have been just as happy in the back row. And making our reservation online added a $10 reservation fee to the total.
Luckily there is a wooden fence protecting the front row from blowing sand but even so, with the rain and wind we had, there were berms of sand piling up on the interior of the fence. So if you want to be closest to the beach, be prepared for some sandblasting of your rig.
The County has instituted a policy of only being able to reserve so far ahead, so they can avoid problems of groups of campers reserving for years ahead on holiday weekends. I'm honestly not sure I'd want to be here on a holiday weekend. I can just imagine the parties. Perhaps a bit wilder than I'd be comfortable with.
I don't think the lack of wi-fi is really that big of a deal, but it would have made blogging easier. I'm not ready to try posting from my phone too often, although my husband kept up with his facebook friends that way. And the price is - well, you are on the beach, so . . . hey, you're on the beach.
To me the worst part of the park was the noise. Los Angeles International Airport is less than a mile away and at night, starting about 11 pm, whatever runway is closest to the park comes alive with the sounds of jets taking off. I'm guessing that this is mostly for international flights to Asia but possibly also to Hawaii. All I know is that, although flights are taking off all the time, the evening was much louder than the day. Now it could have just seemed louder as the evening is usually quieter, but I just know that if we were watching local television, the planes upset the picture every time and interrupted our conversations. My husband felt he got used to the planes and put them in the background noise, but I disagree - to me, although some of the flights were that way, a goodly portion of them were just too loud to ignore.
So just be warned - this is not a resort-style park, but it has the basics and plenty of nice folks who are out to have a good time. It isn't cheap, there's no wi-fi, and you're going to have to contend with being under the flight path, but if you can handle that, you can have a lot of fun and enjoy the beautiful sights. We saw one sunset Thursday night which was just fabulous, even though the other nights were a bit too cloudy, but that's okay. We had a wonderful time with our new motorhome and our family had a fun time, too.
Date of Stay:
April, 2014
