Santa Monica Mountains — Pt Magu — To whoever is not listening to the sea

Point Magu State Park is at the western edge of the Santa Monica Mountains recreation area, a patchwork of parks managed by local counties, the State of California and the National Park Service (NPS). The overall area has over 500 miles of trails, accessible to people, horses and bikes! The rules are different depending on what park you are in...we learned to read carefully. Rufus was able to go hiking with us in the NPS managed trails at Trancas Canyons on our first afternoon. That hike nearly killed her, (so she says), so she took it easy the rest of the weekend. Which was good, because dogs aren't permitted on the trails where we camped.

Trancas Canyon.  Rufus enjoying the smell of coastal sage...or something like that! — Trancas Canyon. Rufus enjoying the smell of coastal sage...or something like that!

Thornhill-Broome provides campsites directly on the beach...and the road.

We stayed in the Sycamore Canyon Campground, which sits right across the road from the beach. (A nearby campground is directly on the beach, but also directly on the road. No thanks!) The campground itself didn’t have much to offer. Despite that, and the fact that it was socked in by fog until around 2pm, the area was really popular. The campground was full, the beach was full and there was a steady stream of bikes passing through literally from sunrise to sunset both days we were there.

Wendy had a chance to go hiking — it was fun to hike again in hard-packed trails with some trees, although many had been fired damaged. There were also open pasture and great views. Surprisingly, this was truly a solo hike — she hiked for over two hours without seeing another soul!

Overall, our experience at Point Magu provides a perfect example of the tradeoffs of our new lifestyle — if you want to share in a public good, you have to shift your expectations and live and let live. After some searching, we found the one shower that provided hot water…which also did not require any tokens! Double-success! (We’ll ignore the shower that took our tokens, but provided no hot water.) The sinks at this campground are all outside and those by the hot shower overlook a parking lot and the road…but also the ocean. That’s a beachfront view! Brush your teeth and watch the sunrise! Our camping neighbors were fine for the most part. However, on our first night we were awoken by breaking sticks…snap! snap! snap! It lasted about an hour, from 1am - 2am. We developed a really clear picture in our minds of the stick breakers during that hour; it was not of three tow-headed girls aged about 8, 6 and 4. But at 6:30am when the stick breaking resumed, it was at the hands of those three. They had quite the fire going by the time their Mom got up. Live and let live…AND keep one eye on the kids playing with fire to ensure they don’t burn the whole place down!