Gaviota State Park

We ended up here because it was the last spot that had camping availability in the Santa Barbara area. We had checked El Capitan and Refugio State Beach– but they were both full :[
The camping price is $ 45 (a little steep considering the other spots are $ 15). Keep in mind it is super super windy at night and it will probably always be like that, after asking some locals.
DO:
— The Gaviota Wind Caves! It is literally right next to the camp site on a small trailhead with a warning sign. It’s off: Hollister Ranch Rd and you won’t miss it– it’s a semi-​popular trial, yet a little difficult to find. If you still have trouble, try downloading ‘All Trails,’ it will give you the correct trailhead with the right pathways. It could get somewhat difficult if you keep walking down the pathway, so make sure you make a quick left up the steep hill when
— Buy what you need to buy, food-​wise, supply-​wise, etc, since there is absolutely NOTHING in the area for about 10+ miles. So come prepared!
DON’T:
— Have a crappy tent that can easily fly away with the glorious winds of Gaviota State Park. We had a neighbor who set up in 30 minutes and after another 30 minutes had their tent snap with no more support left.
— The pier is closed so don’t try being a badass and climbing or walking down the pier, there’s always a reason why these things temporarily close!
Overall, enjoy your time at the park, choose your nights wisely, browse around at other locations before you commit to a $ 45/​a night camping spot (when there are easily $ 15 ones a few miles away), and HAPPY hiking!

The hike up to the wind caves is strenuous if you’re someone who does not exercise on a daily-​that was us. It starts off as a paved road, and eventually you’ll reach a narrow dirt trail on the left. I wished someone would’ve mentioned that even though the paved road continues on, this dirt trail was the way to go. We learned the hard way. Be prepared to climb a steep hill with nothing to hold on to. There are no check points or signage to lead you in the right direction, so just keep following the trail. As hot, rough, and scary steep, as the trail was, the wind caves was worth it!

Moderate to strenuous hike depending on your fitness level! Walk up paved for a short time then up a steep single track! 2 miles and 600 feet elevation gain! A Beautiful hike with gorgeous views of Gaviota Pass and The Pacific Ocean! Caves are awesome! Great rock climbing and exploring them is fun!
Directions to GAVIOTA WIND CAVES
From Santa Barbara, travel west for 30 miles on the 101 Freeway. Take the Gaviota Campground exit (just before the rest area and the Gaviota Tunnel en route to Los Olivos). Just before the campground entrance, take Hollister Ranch Road up the hill to the right. Almost immediately, Gaviota Beach Road turns to the right and there are gravel turnouts on both sides of the road. Park here. The trailhead is on the right next to a mountain lion warning sign.
Trailhead address: Hollister Ranch Road, Gaviota State Park, Goleta, CA 93 117
Trailhead coordinates: 34.471 706, –120.229 656 (34° 28′ 18.14″N 120° 13′ 46.76″W)

Decent campsite a bit out of the way of Santa Barbara close to solvang. Camping is on flat ground with minimal shrubbery. The restroom/​facilities are frequent among the site and pretty decently kept. Rvs and campers and tents around, seemed like a pretty family friendly place. Relatively quiet at night though each campsite is pretty much right on top of the next one. Standard parking, fire pit, picnic table set up for each campsite. The camping is fenced off from where the sand starts to the beach. To get to the beach is a quick jaunt though under the beautiful bridge. On a summer night you’ll hear crickets, frogs, ocean waves, and the occasional freeway car. It feels like camping except for the white glow near the horizon from the freeway. I wouldnt choose to camp here again, probably, it seems like a better place to check out during the day for the hiking and beach and then vamanos. I’d camp here for the convenience (right off the freeway) and location, because it’s a nice beat for a rest between those SoCal and Bay Area road trips

Beautiful state beach with a train bridge stretching across the canyon. Gives the feel of something right out of a book.
Kinda rocky. And pier is still closed due to damage.

Beautiful ocean views and great sand. I love stopping here for pictures every time I drive up the coast.
My sister lives up north and I live in Southern California so I get to visit here often. It is fun to take pictures different times of the year because of the different types of views available.
I have adorable pictures of my kids that were taken here and people think they were photoshop pictures.
There is a rest stop here so if you are on a long drive and need to stop they have a clean place to potty.
The bathrooms are not the best but they are the only thing you will find for near this area.
They have been doing construction here so I am hopeful for a newly renovated rest stop in the near future.
The water is cold here and I normally only see kids in the water.

Awesome hike to see the windcaves. Only about a 30 minute hike to get to the top, and 15 minutes to the first wind cave (which is my favorite!).
You walk down a paved road for a while and then the real hike begins and it gets very steep. Good for a short but difficult workout.
Not much shade, so bring sunscreen and water!

So sad, this beach was covered, I mean COVERED with drying and rotting kelp, and thousands of annoying flies everywhere!
The lifeguards said there was a bad storm that significantly damaged the pier and a huge wave brought in all this kelp, killed a bunch of seals and left this big mess on the beach. There were dead and rotting crabs, flies, dead eels, and other rotting creatures that covered the beach. They haven’t had enough funding or volunteers to help clean it up. What made me extra sad was that a big population of seals and dolphins also got washed up and died all the way to the parking lot. :(
Fishing was also prohibited on the pier, which was also badly damaged from the storm.
Mother Nature, you’re so bipolar.
Ugh, we couldn’t take the amount of flies so we packed up our stuff after ten minutes and went for another beach.

The beach park sucks. I don’t like it there.
I come here for the hiking. The wind caves is a simple hike. less than an hour. There’s two ways to go up, i usually took the harder route if i didn’t go all the way to the abandoned radio tower. The venture to the radio tower was a three hour hike… I was considered a strong hiker b4 my knee gave out so you can judge for yourself on the timing. Definitely take water cause it can get dry real quick when u go a bit inland.
The wind caves are sick. If u go early enough, like get there at 6a, by 7a you are at the caves with minimal disturbance. When i needed some reflection time, i took my folding chair, some food, a book and a couple cigars and half gallon of water (with back up in the car). I will say, if u decide to smoke anything up there to dig a ditch for the ashtray cause the surrounding shrubs are arid which means muy peligroso if u not careful. Also ventilation in the caves suck~!
This area is quite isolated so come prepared and don’t fall off the cliff~!

I love caves, real ones that you can actually stand up in. ;)) I enjoyed climbing up into this cave rock that is big enough to fit about 8 people. It’s got nice rock formations, window like views looking out of it. You can go a little further out passing this cave to more cave like rock structures to sit in. I saw a few people gathered in another cave while we were in this particular one.
We missed the turn to the actual cave while hiking and followed other paths in search of it as there are no signs posted. The easiest way to find it is to walk all the way until the pavement ends than gear off to the left that will go straight up a mountain. It’s a straight up leg work out type of climb but easy– bring the hiking shoes for the lose dirt. Once at the top, this trail will end up looping around-​and if you don’t pay attention you could miss it. Once at the top of the Mountain look for a sort of stepping stone of rocks that gear off to the right that is the actual trail that will end up smoothing out so don’t be discouraged by the rocks as it looks to be challenging but it’s not. If you miss this turn off you will end up looping back to the paved trail heading back to where you started from. I ran into one girl that did that. What we did wrong was go straight from the pavement trail straight along a dirt path that reached a dead end to nothing. So look for that left turn at the end of the pavement. There were some annoying flies at the end of this trail, but the caves are cool and worth spraying the flies with your water spray with. ;p It says 2.5 round trip we did 5 miles, not sure if the count is correct, even with us going the wrong way it wasn’t that long that we discovered it didn’t go anywhere. There is also beach access from this state park to make a day trip of it. :))

This place is great, I cant wait to camp here. The beach, the train tracks, the pier and the wind caves are awesome. The only bad part about this place is that it is a state park and if you want to stay here you have to go through
and that like going to the DMV. The state and their stupid web-​site ruin the nice parks around the area.

My son loves coming here to fish off the pier. It’s not my first choice but it’s a beach! What is not to like?

Really nice campaite. Clean showers alright bathrooms, a place to clean dishes and brush your teeth, beautifully paved trail, smAll beach, fishing pier. Only minus is that it is very windy

All I can say is the Camp god’s took mercy on us when we went to Gaviota, because while it was windy, I was expecting worse, and I did have to wake up once in the middle of the night to pop a pole up on my tent. Our first night there was a Saturday, we got there in the afternoon and the place was packed to the gills, the campsites are pretty small we have a large 8 man tent and that took up about a third of the land, the other third is a picnic table and a fire ring, leaving the last third to be a primary area to get your drink on.
What I really liked about Gaviota was the surrondings minus the people, the beach here was so interesting with wild rock formations, a cool train bridge, the pier full of fisherman and the hike to the wind caves. While here the only wild life seen was a majestic deer and a smelly skunk. Huge minus for me where the other campers, while most were cool with families, there was an incident during the night where a bunch of drunk youngsters where being rude and loud around 2 in the morning, rangers don’t really patrol this place, so there was a yelling match… they were kicked out in the morning.
Our second night was a Sunday night and it was awesome, everyone had left, we had room to stretch we were in serious danger of running out of booze, but they have a convenient store that sold not only beer, which we were in dire need of but they also sold my true love Tapatio. The store is cash only but they do have an ATM that charges a fee, this place closes at 5 so time is of the essence.

Gaviota is a wind tunnel. I think I earned a merit badge staying here.
We were a group of 10 families on an annual camping trip.
There are no group sites to chose from so we we got 3 sites. The first night was awesome! the second was a bit gusty but tolerable. My tent pulsated like it had a heart beat.
THere is a gentleman who camps there every year for 10 years in a teardrop trailer. Came up to my sister who showed up on the 3^rd night and dropped a few large stakes at her feet saying, «You’re gonna need these». I asked, «Do you think it’s gonna get worse than last night?» He said, «Oh you better believe it!». That night, my tent poles snapped like twigs in 35 mph winds. My sister’s tent was fine because of him but my husband and I slept in the car, wind rattling it like an earthquake.
My eyes burned from all the dirt blowing into them. Though my sister and I are convinced the dirt was good for our skin! :)
The Camp hosts are very attentive. Selling wood at the same time every night. The bathrooms were fine and were cleaned every morning. Showers are hot, a quarter for 2 minutes worth. There are outlets in the bathrooms too. Hot water is available for dishwashing, though with the flying dirt, why bother?
The train does come through at night but it’s not too terrible. At Refugio, it feels like it’s driving though your soul, it’s that loud. But here it’s ok.
As a final warning, there are skunks and ferrel cats but no raccoons. These critters are not afraid of you. Put your food away and all garbage in the dumpsters before going to bed, otherwise you may come across one in the middle of the night. Yikes.
All in all, there is a reason there’s so many available sites during the summer.

Nice and secluded campsite.
Made reservations online 2 months prior to the camping weekend on Reserve-​Online and paid $ 95 for 2 nights. I called the morning to confirm and get directions – fantastic!
We got there at 2 pm and at the gate were charged another $ 10 per car per night – Wow, that was news to me. So we got in and found our place. We were 2 cars and 8 people, and the location #8 camp site that I picked was close to the showers and restrooms, and licking with two large trees, and a picnic table. The area was pretty dry with little grass, and the wind was nearly non-​stop blowing from 20 to 60 mph at night.
The hot showers cost 2 quarters and flush toilets were the reason I picked this place, besides the location: 2 hours north of Los Angeles. It’s a 30 minute drive north of Santa Barbara and only 10 minutes from Buelton and an extra 5 to Solvang.
The beach was a good 5 minute walk from the campsite, and there was a nice pier with lots of fishermen angling to get their catch. The beach was nice and there are trails nearby. I did 2 five mile runs during the weekend, and if you don’t mind the 40 to 60 mph winds and the hills, then this is a great place to train.
There’s a general store with lots of stuff to buy in case you forgot sunscreen or frozen pizza. A bag of ice is $ 5.
I really want to give this place a 5 star rating, but considering the winds averaged 40 to 60 mph, make sure your tent can withstand these winds. Unfortunately my sisiter’s tent pole broke and at 12:30 am Saturday morning I was tying the roof of her tent to a tree branch to prevent the roof being blown down on the campers and suffocating them.
Otherwise it was a fun weekend with my nephews, and niece.