A Hop Above Santa Barbara, Camp Cushy

It’s always a little sad when the great coast road strays inland. There you are, blasting north on the 101, passing Ventura, passing Santa Barbara, then, sigh, waving goodbye to the shoreline when the freeway veers inland at Gaviota Pass. This landscape is gorgeous too, but the beach is the beach.

So it felt a little like cheating one Friday last month when, with Santa Barbara fading in the rearview mirror and the great veer inland just a few miles off, up jumped our destination.

We were bound for the cabins of El Capitan Canyon, which sit by a creek, pool and upscale country store about 20 miles north of Santa Barbara, 115 miles north of Los Angeles. The canyon has no neighbors in the city sense of the word--just the vast acreage of Los Padres National Forest.

Once we pulled off the 101, parked, checked in and stepped into that country store, the cheating sensation only deepened. El Capitan Canyon, for years a rustic campground, has gone fancy.

These days the mile-deep canyon is devoted not to campsites, but mostly to 100 cedar cabins with electricity, beds and linens, kitchens, bathrooms and upstairs sleeping lofts for kids. (A few have fireplaces and spa tubs.) El Capitan State Beach, reachable via a freeway underpass, is a five-minute walk from the canyon entrance and is usually staffed by a lifeguard. Although the canyon’s lodging offerings include 25 “deluxe safari tents” here and there on permanent platforms, this is camping in the same sense that Universal CityWalk is Los Angeles.

Not that I’m complaining. I’m a fan of wimp camping from way back. When a San Francisco hotelier opened the ritzy Costanoa campground near Half Moon Bay in 1999, I headed to Northern California within two months and was won over almost immediately. The new El Capitan is the same sort of largely domesticated animal.

Although I do have a few niggles (which will follow) about prices and logistics at the place, the big picture is a pleasant one: Since new owner Chuck Blitz took over in 2001 and reoutfitted the campground with all these comforts (and reduced its capacity from about 3,000 to about 300), this is a good place to bring your spouse or your children, sidle up to the Central Coast, sit around a campfire and creep up a ridgeline trail without getting, you know, dirty.

By the time my wife, Mary Frances, and I arrived, it was midafternoon on Friday, and we had been preceded by our friends Lois and Michael and their daughters, 15-year-old Rachel and 13-year-old Deborah. The first step was to drop off our bags and leave our car at the lot near the entrance; parking is forbidden farther up the canyon, and that contributes immensely to the countrified, kid-friendly feel of the place.

Though an employee told us the place was about 80% occupied, the area seemed largely empty. The sun filtered down through the leaves of old oaks and tall sycamores, a pair of hawks hung high overhead, and the canyon walls were upholstered with thick brush.

Our creek-side cabin cost more than others, but we figured we would pay for a little better atmosphere. On arrival we were assigned to No. 203. I immediately envied 204 and 205, where bushes and a bend in the creek provided more privacy.

Still, we had it pretty good: a clever cabin design that offered a view of trees and sky from the bed, a porch with a pair of chairs, a picnic table and fire ring out front, a microwave and coffee maker in the kitchen, fancy shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom, and a location not far from the cache of 25 one-speed beach-cruiser bicycles that are loaned free to guests on a first-come, first-served basis.

The price for the cabin will give true campers sticker shock: $172 per night (marked down from $215 because of our auto-club discount). That seemed a bit high to me, and I got crankier when we caught up with Lois, Michael and the girls. They had settled into a plain old “canyon cabin” that was virtually identical to ours but farther up the canyon and farther from the (nearly dry) creek, amid a slightly greater density of units. Their rate: $132.

Next time, we probably will go for a canyon cabin, and we may wait until fall, when the seasonal rates change. Nov. 1 to April 30, weekend rates are 15% to 20% lower than in summer. The cheapest option is a safari tent--no private bathroom and no sleeping loft--on a weekday in winter. Or, if you really want to camp and don’t mind tussling for space through the state-park reservation system, (800) 444-7275, you can put up a tent at El Capitan State Beach for $12 nightly.

With birds in the trees and the sun in the sky, it is possible to put finances out of mind, and that’s what we did Friday night. We made dinner, sat at a picnic table and gnawed on hunks of cheese while a blue jay flew tabletop sorties in search of bread crumbs. After dinner, we pulled out the guitars and sang around the campfire.

The rest of the weekend was about that simple. We rode bikes to the often-understaffed store, where we liked the trendy magazines and books on adobe home design but marveled at “s’mores kits” priced at $15.75. We sipped coffee on the porch. We sang and strummed and read.

Instead of driving through the Santa Ynez wine country or fishing from the pier at Gaviota State Beach about 10 miles north, we nosed around tide pools Saturday morning (terrific sand crabs, mussels, anemones and star fish), then again on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon, we hiked about two miles on the occasionally steep Paradise Point trail, which follows a ridge overlooking the canyon. Mostly, we were very happy.

But we did agree on a few suggestions for canyon management: First, the place should offer better maps of the nearby trails. One employee described a couple of them to us, but nobody mentioned the 2 1/2-mile biking and walking trail that connects El Capitan State Beach with Refugio State Beach to the north--something I’d like to walk or ride next time.

Also, about the toilets: The private bathrooms in El Capitan’s cabins have an eco-friendly design that works like an RV’s holding tank. Typically, workers empty canisters every few days. But sometimes, either through forgetful employees or a fume snafu in the system, odors arise and afflict the innocent. (We weren’t the only such victims: “Ohh! I can smell it too,” we heard a neighbor exclaim one morning.)

It’s not a hard problem to solve. When we raised this issue with the desk staff, workers were dispatched and the air was cleared. But at $172 (or $132) at night, the scent of poo will not do.

Before I begin sounding too grumpy, let me say also that late Saturday afternoon, we grabbed a table in the group picnic area, watched the canyon crew light a bonfire, then tucked into dinners (including tomato-and-feta salad and twice-baked potatoes) prepared by the store’s vegetarian chef. We settled in with a few hundred guests and day-trippers to hear Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan, who have been playing acoustic blues in Santa Barbara County for more than a decade. Dinner and concert were $15 per person. The food, the fire, the music, the darkening sky--it was enough to make Sunset magazine look like a gritty documentary.

The last big test came Sunday as we prepared to leave. I asked the girls to assess their weekend. Rachel liked the store and the picnic area but not the long walk between her cabin and the store. Deborah thought the Paradise Point trail featured no paradise and had no point, but she liked “being able to look out the window and see something that isn’t manufactured.” And they both loved the sleeping lofts. In other words:

Assuming all is OK with your pocketbook and the plumbing, thumbs up on El Cap.

Christopher Reynolds, formerly a writer for the Travel section, covers arts for The Times.