Mailbag
Excerpts from all the interesting email I receive.
Local camping
Hello-I love your site. Me and a few buddies arethinking of camping in the area, Santa Barbara. Can you make a suggestion? We are 27-32 and want to camp and hike for a weekend. Red Rock sounds great but so does the 7 falls hike. Should we camp at Red Rock? El Capitan? somewhere near 7 Falls? We are thinking of taking a day to hike and a day to wine tast.
Thanks for your suggestions!
Posted on 2004-08-28
Not much camping is available in town. Well, none at all.
Your choice for car-camping is El Capitan or Refugio. Both are state beaches and cost whatever it costs for state parks. They're nice with showers and convenience stores. They're out of town about 15 miles or so.
Your other choice is to camp along Paradise Road, which is on the way to Red Rock. You can't camp at Red Rock itself, but there are several forest service campgrounds with either pit or chemical toilets (not sure which) and I don't think there's any running water.
Nice thing about Paradise Road is the camping is cheap, the setting is nice, it's over the mountains from Santa Barbara,and it's half way between Santa Barbara and wine tasting. There are more than one campground on the road, so if the first one is full (probably not likely) keep going. One of my favorites is Upper Oso.
Diane