Dockweiler State Beach

"LA County Beach WITH FIREPITS"

My family had the pleasure of heading out to Dockweiler and had a great time!!

Although you do have to pay for parking (we paid $10/car for the peak summer weekend rate), the beach is long and stretching, so even though there are tons of cars and people, you don't feel at all cramped once you are set up there (and we were even visiting on 4th of July weekend!!)  We did have to wait quite a long time in traffic to get up to the pay booth, so plan accordingly and prep the kids for the wait.  

Dockweiler boasts LA county's only fire pits, and people arrive EARLY to snag these and set up camp for the whole day.  

A perk for my little ones was the continuous loop of planes heading off over our heads into the pacific from LAX.  Although this did make for some noise, it truly did add another dimension of fun to my little ones beach experience as they guessed where the planes were headed and we talked about how long it would take them to get there.  I am pretty sure my one-year-old waved "bye-bye" to about 80% of the planes.  

The restrooms are pretty typical for a beach, and there were a few "walking vendors" selling wares in the parking lot that actually saved the day for us as we forgot to bring the required sand buckets and shovels.  

If it's not a very busy day, I suppose you could drive around looking for parking at a "free" beach, but we headed here and enjoyed our day immensely!