San Clemente Beach Day

The forecast was for 100 degrees today, so we decided to take the day off an have a "field trip".  We decided to go to San Clemente for lunch and then find a beach to spend the afternoon at.  We took the Ortega Highway to San Juan Capistrano.  If you look at our May 1 blog post, there is a map of the Ortega Highway.  It is the only way over the mountains from here to Orange County.  The only other ways are up through Corona or down through Oceanside.  It is a very winding road, and although Capistrano is only 20 mile as the crow flies, it takes an hour on the Ortega Highway!

The San Juan Capistrano Mission (you know the "swallows") is very disappointing.  It is on a street corner downtown. Plus there seemed to be a lot of construction go on inside.  I am sure it is nice to visit inside, but it just wasn't in our plans for today.  Here is a google maps street view of the mission.

That's the Mission behind the van.

We did walk down the street to a large antique shop and spent some time browsing around.  I saw a nice amber necklace that I wanted to buy for Elly, but we passed on it to save money.  This shop also charges 12% sellers premium in addition to rent if you want to sell in a space at this mall.

This is the amber  necklace that I liked

Me in one of the booths

You can tell we are in California!

Elly in the Antique Mall

One of the antique booths

After looking around the shop for some time, we decided to head to San Clemente for lunch. Once in San Clemente we decide to eat at Nick's. The place was real nice and the food was fantastic!  It wasn't too pricey either.

Nick's Restaurant

Elly at the restaurant. Her hair is getting longer!

Downtown San Clemente

After lunch we decided to head towards San Onofre State Beach.  We decided used our GPS to take all the back roads in San Clemente that would take us to the shore.  If we found a nice beach we would stay there, rather than go to our original destination of San Onofre.  As luck would have it we found the San Celemente State Beach at Calafia.

This beach was great, a lot of parking, not crowded and really nice sand with no rocks.  There were condo apartments overlooking the beach.  I bet those are expensive!
 

Looking down the beach

Condos overlooking the beach

Elly Relaxing at the Beach

 Just like in Del Mar, the train tracks run right along the back of the beach. You can watch this youtube video I took of the train going by.

After we had enough sun, we drove down to our original destination, San Onofre State Park.  The State Park surrounds the nuclear power plant which is currently shut down.  There is a lot of controversy and public meeting surrounding the restart of this plant.

The State beach was packed with all sorts of vehicles with surf boards. There must have been over 300 "surfer dude" vehicles and only a few parking spaces left.  This is where all the surfers go.

San Onofre State Beach in 1963.  I think some of those cars are still there!

San Onofre State Beach today.

 We sat at watched the surfers for a while and then headed to Carlsbad on the way home.  In Carlsbad we stopped at the Coyote Grill to relax with a few drinks and nachos.

Coyote Grill & where we sat

 The band started playing and they weren't that good, so we decided to call it a day and head back home.  We decided to try and do at least one outing like this each week before we have to head back to to New England.