When you think of celebrity filled Malibu with its Pacific coastline, mountains and iconic Pacific Coast Highway, RV parks probably don’t spring to mind.

But Malibu does in fact have a single RV park.  And it was our (son Nick and my) Memorial Weekend destination for years.

When Nick was a pre-teen, and me not wanting to travel on the holiday, I looked for something close to Redondo Beach where we could have a local getaway for the long May weekend.

I found The Malibu Beach RV Park just 30 miles north on California Highway 1.

Built into a terraced hillside the RV park is on PCH – Pacific Coast Highway.  As luck would have it, the road up to the top plateau was too steep for RVs, so they turned that space into their tent campground.  Lucky, as we did not own an RV, but we did own a tent!

A series of paths and steps lead from the RV park down to a culvert that runs under PCH and out onto a very broad stretch of State beach.  This was ideal as an attempt to cross PCH on foot, in flip-flops, could have proved fatal.

It was here that I learned that the rest of the world gets way more vacation time than we do.  A family from Germany was our tent neighbor three years in a row.  I know they felt sorry for us when we discussed my two weeks, vs their two months, of annual vacation.  Oh well.

Nick and I did camp in style even without an RV.  The Malibu Seafood Fresh Fish Market & Patio Café is on PCH just before the Park.  We carried a large empty cooler with us from home and stopped at the fish market on the way where I bought shark and swordfish steaks and jumbo shrimp.  So while our neighbors were barbecuing hamburgers and hotdogs, Nick and I were dining on fresh seafood.

The RV Park’s inland side is adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains National Preserve, so no development, just open natural space.  This provided us that chance to see a few wild animals such as deer that came near the campsites at night, and skunk, that would walk through the campsites looking for food.  Don’t startle the skunks.

In all, it made for a great long weekend of sun and fun.