Scant Summer Accommodations

Spontaneous beach camping during the summer is a memory as nostalgic as “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriett.”

All but one of Orange County’s beachfront campsites already are booked weekends through September, mirroring a broader lack of space at many of the nation’s campgrounds.

Rustic camping in the back hills is fine, but it’s the beachfront, with its Surf City image, that draws the crowds in Orange County. Doheny State Beach in Dana Point--and its grassy picnic spots, nearby harbor and visitors center with indoor tide pools--is among California’s most popular.

Unpacking a tent trailer early Friday afternoon on one of 33 prime beachfront campsites at Doheny were the Oylers and the Greenlees of Hesperia. When had they made this reservation?

“In 1992,” Perry Greenlee said, exaggerating by a few years. “Actually, our reservationist is over there lying in the sand. She called seven months ago to the day.”

This year, an already tight camping situation has grown even more frustrating. Huntington Beach closed its city spaces in May for a construction project and said Friday it will not reopen them, ending a 20-year history of camping south of the pier. Crystal Cove State Park’s spaces are only about to reopen because of storm damage.

The good news is that the tardy opening means two dozen campsites overlooking El Morro Bay are expected to be reopened soon at Crystal Cove. And if one is able to hike 2 1/2 miles into the canyon--carrying water, no less--these campsites are among the limited areas near the beach where camping is still open for the Fourth of July weekend.

“Usually, we have 32 campsites, but because of storm damage up in our back country above El Morro Canyon, they’ve been closed,” said Bob Dolan, a lifeguard with the state Department of Parks and Recreation. “We expect to have 24 open by the Fourth of July weekend, and about 12 are done now. Maintenance has been working on them.”

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Crystal Cove State Park’s ruggedness makes it less convenient than RV and car-camping options. But that also makes it more peaceful. Above all: It has space. Maintenance work has forced the park to forgo reservations, allowing last-minute campers an option.

“We’ve been getting 10 or 15 calls an hour,” Dolan said. “People have been calling because we are one of the only parks with openings now.”

Veteran shore campers know that calls for reservations were better placed during the NFL season.

“A lady called asking for a Fourth of July campsite, and I just laughed,” said an operator at Park Net, the toll-free reservation service ([800] 444-7275) employed for most of the 268 state parks. “There is only one park [in the state system] that has a few sites available, and I had never even heard of it: the Humboldt Redwoods.”

The shortages of public beach camping space, for which prices rarely top $25 a night, have forced some campers to spend more per night on nonpublic locations.

The privately run Newport Dunes Waterfront RV Resort on the Back Bay has 406 campsites. Tent camping (no stakes) is allowed on 100 of them, and those sites are farthest from the beachfront. Prices vary based on proximity to the water line and amenities such as laundry and “village” market. They range from $27 for the smallest campsite on a weekday to $95 for the best beachfront campsite on a weekend, advertising director Erica Schmidt said.

“None are very far from the water,” she said. “If you call on a Monday, you can probably get in on [that] weekend. I would encourage people to call, because we have waiting lists and cancellations.”

Public beach fees, by comparison, range from $17 to $24, but the supply is more limited. (Doheny has only 33 beachfront sites.)

The first available weekend for camping at Doheny State Beach is Oct. 16. As of Friday, the first weekday campsite opening is Sept. 7.

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The DeLillo family of Tustin had no idea how fortunate they were in getting a last-minute campsite. At Doheny. A few steps from the sand. On a Friday for a summer weekend. They had lucked into a cancellation.

“I called last week,” Dave DeLillo, a Huntington Beach car dealer, said Friday afternoon as he erected a dome tent with sons Chris, 7, and Michael, 9. They had the shade tree. They had the lullaby of crashing waves and Jet Skis tracing white wakes around the turquoise water.

Had they not gotten a spot at Doheny, DeLillo said with a laugh, “we would have gone camping in the backyard.”

Last year was the first time in 40 years of camping at Doheny that Linda Spencer of Redlands had secured a beachfront campsite there. “Hurricane Linda hit, so we had to cancel. We went to Palm Springs,” she said Friday, sitting beneath the shade of a lifeguard tower with friend Linda Flagg of San Bernardino. This year, their campsite was farther away from the sand.

“I’m a planner, so I don’t mind calling and reserving six months in advance,” Spencer said. “All these people at the beachfront? They’re obviously planners too.”

Otherwise, campers must forget about weekends and go for weekday trips. Bolsa Chica State Beach’s first weekday opening, for instance, is Sunday, July 5. (Sundays are considered weekdays in the camping world.)

The county’s oceanfront campgrounds are so popular that they are often reserved as much as seven months in advance, especially by year-round motor homers who gobble up dozens of weeks in a call. While camping may seem an overly broad term for living in a motorized dwelling that has a microwave, satellite dish and hot tub, the RV still dominates most campgrounds. Most parks allow recreational vehicles, and some, such as Bolsa Chica State Beach, allow only RV or “self-contained” camping.

But Huntington Beach officials decided that, effective June 15, the beach parking lot at 1st Street and Pacific Coast Highway known as Sunset Vista would no longer be used for camping. Previously, 100 of the Huntington City Beach sites were available for RV campers during winter months; 50 were available for one-night stays during summer months when beach parking is in greater demand.

The camping sites at first were closed because nearby construction ate up parking for day use beach-goers. But the lot--and it is a parking lot--will remain closed. Part of the problem is that its restrooms are in disrepair. But it also will remain closed because the sight of a field of RVs might be considered a visual blight for a planned hotel nearby, said Steve Benson, the city’s parking and camping supervisor.

A weekly report circulated Thursday by Huntington Beach City Administrator Ray Silver to city department heads stated that “now is the ideal time to discontinue camper use on the city beach parking lot” because parking will be limited by new developments along the coast including the second phase of a Hilton hotel. Added RV hook-ups at Bolsa Chica State Beach should offset the loss somewhat.

When it comes to camping, the need for constant vigilance doesn’t end with a reservation. Getting a prime spot--near a tree or the restrooms--is a second worry.

Some die-hards show up at daybreak to scout premium locales. Doheny and several state parks hold a daily lottery to assign out California’s 10,000 campsites. Upon arrival, campers are issued a random number that determines in what order they will select their campsite. Friday’s lottery at Doheny breezed by in 20 minutes with nary a whimper.

Before the lottery system, things could get “ugly,” said Denise Estrada, supervisor of visitor services and camping and a 16-year veteran at Doheny.

“People would line up at 4 a.m.,” she said as family-packed vehicles lumbered into the park midday Friday. “We had fistfights, ‘I was here before you were’ stuff. It just got to be a safety issue. We had enforcement problems. Now a few people complain about the lottery system, but usually only the ones who get the bottom-of-the-list numbers.”

* SPACE CONSTRAINTS: Getting reservations for national park sites also could be difficult. L2