Port San Luis RV Campground — Local services in Grover Beach

I love this town and beach! We are locals, lived here in SLO County from birth. We have always wanted to camp by the ocean in Avila but have never been able to get in. We have managed to stay at the RV camping up on the bluff. So, I was so excited when I managed to get a site at the Nobi area! Campsite #5 was the only site I could find available. For 4 nights! Not over the weekend, but we were super happy to get one at all. The day we were leaving to come camp I checked the website and found out that Nobi 3 was available for two of the 4 nights we were there! If you’ve been to Nobi, you know that site 5 is directly behind 3 and a camper in 3 can pretty much totally block site 5’s view of the ocean. Well, it was too late to cancel our original reservation without full penalty. But to us, it was worth it to pay for both sites to be able to have the unobstructed view of the ocean for two of the days. I quickly reserved #3 and we were on our way. We stayed the first night with a small motor home between us and the ocean. The second night, the view was ours and we enjoyed it immensely. On the 3rd day the camp host texted me and asked when we were coming in. I responded that we were there already, parked in space 5. A few minutes later the camp hosts drove up and said, we had an issue and that we could not occupy 2 spaces unless we had another camper in the other one. We explained what happened. Their only response was, see the port for reimbursement. Well we didn’t mind losing the money, especially if we had unknowingly broken the rules. The next day a huge Tiffan motor home with a full size Jeep pulled in, right in front of us. Gone was all of our view. We were so disappointed. If we’d known the hosts were going to cancel one of reservations for that day, we would have chosen to move into the view site. But we weren’t told they would cancel our reservation and open one of the spaces to someone else. My husband went to talk to the office the next day. They basically said, tough, you broke the rule, it’s too popular here for someone to have two sites and not occupy both. No refund. We ended up enjoying some days and hours with the spot in front of us empty. But the whole experience with the hosts was so negative it took a lot of joy out of our vacation. It could have been handled so much better, we are generally rule followers and would have cooperated with the rules, we just would have liked to have more friendly understanding conversations with the representatives...

We camped here in our fifth wheel a few weeks ago. It was a Sunday and really crowded. We were half an hour early before check in so we needed to just wait. We saw a sign that said RV parking only. No vehicles. Perfect! A place we could hang out and wait. I jumped out to get food. Soon after my husband called and said he had to move the RV. I walked over from the cafe to see if our spot was open and it was, so I texted him to drive over to our spot. As I was helping my husband back in the RV, a woman walked up to me and pointed her finger at me and sternly said, “YOUR HUSBAND PARKED IN SOMEONE ELSE’S SPOT!” Confused, I replied, “what”? She repeated the same thing, pointing at him and then pointing back at me for some reason. I said, “who are you?” She said she was the camp host. I was so confused because I had no idea what she was talking about. I explained there was a sign that said RV parking, and we were just waiting 30 min. for check in. (See picture) It doesn’t say campsites. She didn’t care and said, “At least you actually do have a reservation because most people lie about that too!! So obviously you have never stayed with us , so let’s go over the rules!!” She didn’t introduce herself when she walked up to me, just pointed her finger and yelled, was never friendly, and talked down to us the whole time. I’m pretty sure her name was Beverly. Then, the next morning at 5 am traffic began, since the RV spots are actually on the road, you hear everyone driving to work. We will never camp...

Great location. If you can handle dry camping, you can get directly waterfront. Otherwise with hookups you'll be on the parking lot up against the cliff with all the other sardines. Dump station is available but expensive. There is no free water if you need to fill up your storage tanks. It costs $0.50 for 5 minutes of flow, which does not bad, but still annoying that it's not free after paying such high prices for a dry camping spot. There are pay showers available as well. Not too bad, but no temperature adjustment. I did not use their showers, so I don't know how warm the water is, but in my experience these showers where you cannot adjust the temperature are barely lukewarm. I guess for liability reasons they don't make them very hot, which can make for a miserable shower experience. The nearby FatCats Cafe restaurant is great. Breakfast lunch and dinner available. Be advised the entrance to the Diablo Canyon power plant is right here at the campground, and they start early shifts, so you will hear quite a bit of traffic between 4:30 and 6:00 a.m. If one of the units is shut down for a refueling outage, the traffic increases by probably a...