El Capitan Campground

El Capitan Campground is only 15 minutes north of Santa Barbara. What can I say about this place? A lot of good things about it.

We start out journey on August 13, 2022 from Orange County. Two fathers and 4 kids (ages 2,3,6,9). Obviously, we are outnumbered. We left at 10 am which is a bit late to fight traffic. Ideally, we should have let at 9 am. The drive was not too bad cause we were hit by a few spotted jams as we approached downtown Los Angeles. After 1.5 hours, we stopped at Riverpark in Oxnard for the kids to stretch their legs, go to Target and grab a jar of coconut oil and corn kennel to make popcorn, and brunch at Luna Grill. This place was amazing outdoor mall. We took our time here and then took off for a hour northward to El Capitan.

To begin, each site is allow up to 8 people and a minimum of 2 cars each. If you are planning to sneak in more than 8 people, then good luck. Rangers do keep track on the amount of people in each site. For each site, you are allowed 1 car that comes with your camp reservation and for any additional vehicle you will pay $10 (according to the time I wrote this blog August 16, 2022), a onetime fee on length of you stay. You can pay at the entrance of the campground.

If you are lucky few who are able to score any site at Portola (Group Campsite B), you can park up to 4 vehicles. This is because this part of El Captain campground for both RV and normal vehicles. A majority of the sites are shade, if you are not sure if it is shaded or not, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p3xTzBoFJo&t=418s and check out which sites are shaded. We stayed at site #96 which was perfect balance for shade and sun for our solar panel to charge our battery for the portable refrigerators.

According to what I observed, all of the campsites have a raised fire ring with a BBQ grill. The grills are rusty and dirty, so bring a wire brush to clean the grill, or aluminum foil to put on top of the grill. And yes, we are allowed to make fire here for cooking and cuddle up to the warmth of the fire at night. (The reason I mention this is because, during the time of this article is written, California is in a serious drought and wildfire are common so a majority of the campsites in California would not allow you to make a fire.) Because we wanted to be a bit nomad, my friend brought a cast iron skillet to grill pork belly and jack fruit (a must try recipe). I brought my own large gilling basket that I placed next to the fire to toast bread, meat, or veggies. These 2 items work very well for us. If you are interested in what I brought for camping, I will list them below this blog.

Each section of Group Campsite, there are showers for the guests. Unlike other campsites showers I’ve visited; El Capital allows you to pay for your shower with your credit cards instead of quarters. So, you don’t have to worry about looking for people to chance your dollar bills for quarters. (At the time of this article is written, El Capitan website still say that you should bring quarter.) Unfortunately, where we stayed the showers were down, so all the guests have to go to other group sites to shower. On the first day my kids want to skip shower so they can have more play time, and on the second day, we just use the baby wipes to clean ourselves because we were too lazy to drive to a shower.

Beside the beautiful campsite, El Capitan have 3 hiking trails that I notice. One of the popular trail is the one that start at the El Capitan Beach Store to El Capitan Creek and up to the entrance of the campground. This is a great trail for the kids because in first 150 yard, you walking along a nice grassy area with benches, and 30 yards after that, you are greeted with skeleton structed-like tent.

Here the kids can export the structure and balance themselves on the rocks or dips their feet on rocky beach. If you continue on the trail for another 50 yard along the beach it leads inland and the trail become shaded. It lead you to the entrance of the campground. From there you can head down to the Beach Store for snacks and back to your car, or have a picnic and some fun on the beach. I see that here is outdoor showers here for beach goers. During our visit, the creek was not running. The second trail it a long walk along the beach. It is a really beautiful walk or jog in the morning or sunset. The third trail is a bike trail that start from El Capitan campground to Refugio Campground in the North. It is a good 2.4 miles one way and it is flat which was great for kids. I did not bring the bikes because my friend did not bring their bikes because they just go a new van and did not have a chance to install a bike hitch yet.

Now the bad about the campground. There is a train track next to the campground, and if your site is close to it, you will hear it going by every once and a while, even in the middle of the night. This will be a problem if you are a light sleeper. For some reason, on our first night a freight train ran by and blow it’s horn. The second problem with the campsite is ……….. okay, I got nothing.
For sure I will try to come back to this campground really soon.

Breakfast:
Mountain House Freeze Dry food
Cup o’ Noodle
Pre-boiled eggs – boil a dozen eggs the day before the trip, keep it in a large ziplock back, and add them to any of your meal.
Lunch:
We usually eat a big breakfast, so for lunch while we eat snacks when doing small hikes or out and about exploring.
Peaches, chips, watermelon, trail mixes, blueberry, beef jerky, and water

Dinner:
Pho – Usually the day before camping, I would go get pho at the restaurant and take it home. Then, I let the soup cooled down and put it a large plastic jar. I freeze the soup which is great for a cooler because you don’t need to bring ice. When I get to the camp site, I would take it out and place it in the sun, so by dinner time the broth is half defrost. Put it in a large pot, boil, put in the noodle and meat and it is ready to be serve. If I have some left over soup, I would add cilantro, onion, garlic and just save it for the following night as soup for the kids.
Freeze dry food – https://www.yuenx.com/2022/review-rightontrek-vs-mountain-house-freeze-dried-food-taste-tests-favorites-recommendations/

Pork belly and jackfruit – The fun thing about camping is that you can experiment with food. Here my friend Michael Yuen frying up some pork belly and jack fruits on a iron cast skillet. I have to say, it was really good.

Rosemary Rotisserie chicken with rice – Since we have fire, Michael did roasted a chicken on the fire pit. It took 4 hours to complete and 1 hours on how to put the chicken on a stick without it slipping.

Camp fire snacks:
Popcorn: I bought a jar of kennel popcorn and coconut oil. I placed a cooking pot on my stove (or in the camp fire) and added coconut oil. Wait for the coconut oil to heatup, drop a kennel of corn in the pot with the oil, if the kennel pop, it is ready to pour more kennel into the pot, close the lid, and shake it back and forth.