Jalama Beach

 Jalama Beach is a small cove with small Jalama Creek draining into it.  There are dunes between the campground/day parking lot and the beach. At low tide, the beach is very wide, hundreds of feet from dunes to the water, and lots of kelp washes up to dry.  You can walk north or south as far as the ey can see, though we haven't gone more than a few miles and in places one might get stranded at high tide.  With 120 campsites or so, there are lots of people around, but seldom more than a dozen on the beach, walking dogs, surfing or just hanging out.

The little store and restaurant has been here for decades and probably look about the same as it did 40 years ago.  They serve burgers, burritos and various fried foods that are pretty good for what they are. The store has a little bit of everything and their prices are reasonable.  We had originally planned to spend a week here, then a week 100 miles south in Ventura, but we got to talking to someone from Ventura who told us the first-come, first-served camping area we were headed for would likely be full all of Thanksgiving week.  So we decided to stay here at Jalama for another week, as it is so very pleasant and beautiful (though it gets windy sometime, more on that in a later post).  So here we are.