Newport Beach find for a family

Let us never doubt that the Southern California coastline is replete with wonders. The brown pelican incubates eggs with its webbed feet. The bottlenose dolphin stays sleek by sloughing off dead skin nine times faster than humans do. And a traveling family on a budget (drumroll, please) can sleep in swishy Newport Beach for $69 a night.

Yes, it’s amazing but true. The only catch (aside from going in the off-season) is that you have to make peace with RVs.

This doesn’t mean buying one or even renting one, just checking in at Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort & Marina, an RV park that dates back 51 years and covers 100 acres about 40 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Besides its 382 RV berths, amid palms and coral trees, Newport Dunes rents out two dozen cottages.

It’s a prime location. Although I never noticed it in three decades of breezing past on the Pacific Coast Highway, Newport Dunes lies just a block from PCH and Jamboree Road, so close to the shops of Fashion Island you can almost hear them tearing down the Circuit City sign and (keep hope alive!) putting up the new Nordstrom. Generations of locals know Newport Dunes for the fake whale that floats in its lagoon every summer and the fireworks it sends up every Fourth of July.

But for my little family of three, this was an unknown quantity -- not a hotel or condo or rental house, not camping, not a rustic cabin. The resort has its own marina; a little dock; a playground; an upscale restaurant with retractable roof (the Back Bay Bistro); a general store that rents golf carts, Segways and bicycles; and best of all, its own little lagoon, with tiny bay waves lapping at its own crescent of sand, the scene punctuated by meandering ducks, gulls and shore birds. Even after rates rise for summer, it’s easy to see the lure of a few lazy days here.

And as for meanderers, we did wonder about all those RVs and RV people. Would they cramp our style? Would we cramp theirs?

We arrived on a Wednesday in mid-March, spent one night in a studio “camping cottage” (usually $69 and up in low season, $99 and up between Memorial Day and Labor Day) and one night in a one-bedroom unit facing the lagoon.

That studio rate is less than some people pay to park their RVs in summer. It rents you a hard-walled, cleverly designed cottage with AC, portable heater, bathroom, a convertible futon couch, bunk beds, a tiny porch and a location separated from the bay by several rows of RVs. As for what it doesn’t have, there are no linens and no view.

Ours was clean and quiet. For the sake of variety, my wife, Mary Frances, and I upgraded on the second night to one of the 10 waterfront one-bedroom cottages ($149 and up in low season, $199 and up in summer). That meant a separate bedroom for us; sleeping loft for our daughter, Grace; kitchen with full-sized refrigerator; ceiling fans; a television with DVD player; and a waterfront patch of grass with our own picnic table and white picket fence.

Settling in, we found the resort half-empty, the beachfront promenade ideal for an almost-5-year-old bicyclist who still uses training wheels. The grounds were immaculate -- and when a team of groundskeepers revved up their mowers and blowers about 10:30 the next day, we understood how they stay that way. Of course, we used the pool and hot tub. We admired other Southern California wonders, including the cormorants (36 species worldwide) and sandpipers (which often weigh less than 1 ounce). From the store we bought breakfast cereals, milk, juice, Graham crackers, chocolate, marshmallows, a bottle of Happy Camper Cabernet Sauvignon and a few sand toys. (Mercifully, we had no need for the Deluxe Bayonet Sewer Kit, but if I were an RVer with hook-up issues, I’m sure I’d be grateful to see it in stock.)

On the downside, the little dock’s boat rental operation is closed on spring weekends, and the Back Bay Bistro serves dinner only three nights a week, so we wound up leaving those options for another visit. Also, there is the air-traffic issue. We heard flights to and from Santa Ana’s John Wayne Airport zooming overhead a few minutes after 7 each morning -- loud enough to end a light slumber but soft enough to be barely noticeable once you’re awake.

One day, we headed about 10 miles down the coast for a great lunch at the Beachcomber, a revived 1931 cottage in the heart of Crystal Cove State Park’s little beachfront historic district. The next day, we hopped over to Fashion Island, where Grace admired the fountains and took two rides ($2 each) on a carousel much younger and fancier and slower (this is a good thing) than the high-speed antique she’s used to in Griffith Park.

We made our own breakfasts in the kitchen. If we’d really been pinching pennies, we would have cooked our own lunches and dinners, or chowed down someplace like the nearby Taco Bell on PCH. Instead, one night we treated ourselves to dinner at the Chart House along Newport Beach’s PCH restaurant row. The other night, we played host for Orange County friends who arrived bearing boxes from Gina’s Pizza, an Orange County chain known for its whole-grain crusts, fresh pesto and such. We devoured the pizza around the fire ring, with s’mores for dessert. This was followed by a screening of “Mulan II” (for those under 4 feet tall) and for the rest, morenips of that Happy Camper Cab. A few minutes after 10, the groundskeepers came around to make sure the fire was doused.

As for the RV people and their gleaming machinery, we needn’t have worried. The big rigs scarcely moved during our visit, and most stay put for weeks on end. In fact, with the RVs in the lot and the idle yachts in the marina, we were surrounded by stationary travel tools. Yet what we loved about the stay was all the time outdoors on foot, on bikes, on the sand, at the pool or just sitting on the porch, saying hellos as the RVers walked their dogs each morning and evening.

They were nice people, happy to share their partly paved paradise with us. And I’d be happy to join them again, as long as I never have to use a Deluxe Bayonet Sewer Kit.

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chris.reynolds@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Cottages among

all the RVs

NEWPORT DUNES WATERFRONT RESORT & MARINA

1131 Back Bay Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92660; (949) 729-3863, www.newportdunes.com. Through May 21, the Newport Dunes cottages rent for $69 and up (“camping cottage,” no linens) to $149 and up (one bedroom with separate loft, bay front). Starting May 22 and through Labor Day, cottage rates will rise to $99 and up (for the camping cottages) or $199 and up (for the waterfront one-bedroom units).