This place rules. At the end of a 14 mile twisty country road, off of a remote Santa Barbara stretch of Highway 1, close to the town of Lompoc, CA, a 3 hr drive outside of Los Angeles, is Jamama Beach ('Halama' en Espanol) and its campsite. The campsite itself is basic with small slips either on the sand or just away from it. The beach just out front of the campground is memorably windy and chilly, with velvety soft sand laid out to frame small rustic stones that lay beneath. Small sand dunes with picnic tables, and a cafe that serves really (really) good burgers is about as built-up as this place gets. As far as it seems, there are no other roads other than the one that leads you to the Jalama Campground that could take you to this vast and virtually untouched piece of California coastline. It would take a walk at low tide to be able to experience the simple beauty of the spiraling colors in the rock formations or the tall cliffs high above, you can't just drive to a place like this. We walked 2 hours north along the sand the first day of our visit, and 2 hours south the second day only to find more and more bewildering beauty and less and less people.
We now undertand why Jalama Beach goers covet this area (or at least so says Yelp and Tripadvisor). And depending on which review you read online the regulars here are either rude or awesome. Maybe we got lucky because people seemed pretty friendly and laid back to us. One of the the guys who works at the little convenience store cracked some (pretty bad) jokes about the burgers being cooked there for 32 years and that they "must be well done now" (hardy, har, har). He also informed us about it being "Beer Heaven" at Jalama, and true it is. In fact, it wasn't a rare sight to see people walking around with their beers in hand or to hear the crack of a can in the wee early hours of say, 10AM. So we fit right in.
Here's a pic of our awesome van with the beautiful rolling hills behind us (note no telephone wires or roads). This was our second trip in it... fun times...
