San Onofre Bluffs Campground — Hotel in San Clemente

I would give this campground a 3.5 rating overall. What I enjoyed about this campground is how clean the facilities were. The bathroom and showers were tidied up every morning and the campgrounds were located pretty close to the restrooms.

I'm giving this campground a lower rating for a few reasons.

#1 The staff at the front booths appeared to be poorly trained. And I understand that they may be seasonal workers and young but this resulted in what I believe to be an unfair experience for my guests.

To preface, I booked multiple sites (4) under my name and my husbands name. When my friend checked in, they stated that the site # was incorrect (which it wasn't) and so they placed him in a different site (also in our name but only booked for one night). They also wrote the check out date on the ticket for 2 nights instead of one. I told my friend that he could only be there for 1 night but he insisted that they staff wrote him down for 2 nights. Well this resulted in him getting a ticket. When I went up front to speak with the staff, they said the parking pass appeared to have been altered as the date was written over so there was nothing they can do about it. And then they also said they could not find my friends car registered to that site or any site. Which is odd since we have a parking pass for the car, and they said we altered the pass but can't find the car registered anywhere. However, My friend has a bank statement stating he paid for parking that day.

Secondly, When I asked my friends about who paid for parking and how much for additional camp parking a few stated they paid a flat fee and others stated they paid per night. Not sure what the actual policy is but people paid different amounts.

#2 I wish the trails were better maintained. Most trails were closed and the only ones with beach access were trail 1 & 6. It was a bummer we thought we would be alot closer to the water.

Other minor things are sites are very close to one another, no shade depending on the site and some noise from the...

We have been coming to San Onofre Beach State Park for years and have never seen this place so run-down like we have the last two days.

The bushes and shrubs along the drive into but mostly out of the park are so overgrown that it is dangerous and can cause serious damage to your vehicle. For instance, the bushes on the drive leaving the park on railroad side are so overgrown that there is limited space in parts of that exit direction that if you are not careful, those woody branches will scratch the heck out of the side of your vehichle. There would be no way an RV could make it through without getting damaged.

The trail #6 down to the beach right at the beginning was so bad, that the bushes by the dog bag station was so overgrown one could not even get a bag without getting scratched up from those woody branches.

Another very odd observation was the condition of the bushes as you leave the park entrance. Those bushes on the railroad side look as if they have been sprayed with some toxic spray that kills living plants and those shrubs and bushes look to be dying or severely diseased.

I don't know what California is doing with all their tax funds that they so criminally charge their residents but I can tell you, it is NOT going towards maintaining a safe state park here. I can only imagine where those funds are...

This is my least favorite place I’ve ever camped at. We tried to get a campsite as a walk in but park staff said there were no spots available. We checked online and saw dozens of spots open so we had to make an online reservation in order for them to let us in. Clearly they don’t keep track of which spots are open or closed. All the campsites are grouped very close together so you don’t get much privacy. They’re all right along the freeway so it was noisy day and night! It wasn’t peaceful at all. And every few hours the Amtrak would pass by and shake the ground. I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking it was an earthquake. All the sites do have fire pits and a bench. Outdoor showers are free. Sink and bathrooms were clean. They did have compost bins which I thought was neat but it looks like people were just dumping trash in them. We walked 5-10 mins down a sketchy trail to the supposed ‘beach’. We couldn’t find any sandy spots. The beach was very narrow and lined with big pebbles and rocks. It hurt to get into the ocean. We were so...