San Clemente

7:00 – 9:00 am

The sun just topped the sandy cliffs. A dad was fishing, two boys maybe four and five years old ran shrieking through the surf. I sat down on a rock to eat the still warm cinnamon roll picked up at Surf Donut. Until I was inexorably surrounded by seven silent staring seagulls.

Walked the sandy trail beside the rr tracks. Many baseball-capped runners of various ages. The surf sounded stereophonically from the ocean on my left and bouncing off the cliffs to my right.

By a little after 8 hard core beach volleyball was happening and the waves a little south of the pier were swarming with surfers and boogie boarders.

I really enjoyed the beach. Very near Laguna Beach, too!

I lived in San Clemente for just over a year, and it is one of the most fantastic places on earth! The climate is nearly perfect all year round. There is tons to do and you see something amazing just about every day. Make this a definite stop on your list of places to go!

Rainbow Sandals has their factory here so you can get great flip flops at wholesale prices.

It’s about equidistant from north Orange County and San Diego (though technically it’s in Orange County, but at the very southern tip.) It’s a quaint, nice surf town, but the difference is that it seems like its own “county”, if you will. It doesn’t feel like either anything that’s part of Orange County nor north San Diego county. It feels a bit like a smaller Santa Barbara thrown down south.

(Granted, it helps that one of my favorite rock acts, Fu Manchu, hail from here.)