Leo Carrillo State Park

                        Today I’d like to share with you an adventure. Over a year ago we camped at Leo Carrillo State Park, 35000 Pacific Coast HWY, Malibu, CA 90265.

We came with no reservation in the middle of the week and were able to have a campsite. It was offseason. The park started filling up on Friday afternoon and was full by the evening.  The campers arriving were definitely there to have a “good time”.

The Sycamore trees were lovely. It’s a great looking campground. The restrooms were flush toilets and there are showers. The mirrors did have graffiti.  Other than that, the area was kept clean.

 We took short walks around the campground. There were students arriving during the morning hours and were taken on a short-guided tour of some kind, by what appeared to be park staff or volunteers.

There are so many squirrels and they all appear to be starving. The ecosystem is out of order at this campground, it seems. One squirrel made it into our RV and treated itself to some of our snacks in a drawer. We never saw the lil guy, just heard him. We were warned by other campers the squirrels are bold. They are, as they try to come into the RV as you exit or enter. The staff in the park were very friendly.

Our RV was sabotaged by fellow campers. We saw two people in their mid-20s walking very close to the outside of our RV. Thinking that was odd as there was plenty of room to walk through the campground without coming that close.  A few hours later I heard a sound outside the RV that sounded like one of the doors to access the storage and water areas was being closed. Which was odd since we were both in the RV. Being new to RVing at this time we were defiantly on a learning curve. We learned later that Winnebago doesn’t have unique locks for each RV and that the two people were most likely checking our lock numbers so that they could return later and open the door to our grey and black water. They pulled the valves on our water so that when we went to the dump station, we had no control over the water coming out and both the grey and black waters came gushing out all at once, leaving us with a big mess. We thought pranksters such as this would be in the area to watch the mess unfold. However, it being early in the morning and the two of them were most likely recovering from the previous night, didn’t make it to the dump station performance. We learned that we needed to get our locks changes so that they are unique to our RV to avoid this event being repeated. We made it a point to have the locks changed as soon as we returned home.

Since we work online while traveling it is important to us that we have Wi-Fi and cell service. Our site had neither. Our site did have electricity. Site 1 and 2 have some signal and while no one was camping in those sites we were able to go to those sites, along with fellow campers to have a cell signal. The parking lot also had a signal, near where you check in. However, that was a further walk.

This park has a lot going for it, access to the beach and it is lovely. We, however, will not be returning. At least on the weekend or during their season.

Eating area of our campsite.

Back side of our campsite, there is a lot of common area.

Another view of the back side of our campsite and common area.