Vacation VII: Oceanside California

Oceanside









So it is Sunday night before Thanksgiving and we have fought for three hours to travel 130 miles from Valencia. Part of it at 80 miles per hour, part of it stopped dead and all of it in the dark and fairly frustrating for the sad midwesterner (me). My wife had made us reservations at a condo on the beach in Oceanside, literally on the beach in a little development called Northgate or some such. We get off the highway following internet directions at the coast highway. It is dark so you really cannot see your way around that well but the over all impressing at 8:00 at night is.... “sketchy”.

I want to drive around the town a little and we of course need pizza and beer and few groceries. As we coast around the few blocks that make up “downtown” Oceanside we see the same somewhat surreal scene on each street. Every block has a barber shop, and bar and people are lined up outside each on a 65 degree Sunday night. The barber shops are lit up like Disneyland, four chairs going, all male barbers and patrons. Looking at the people hanging outside the bars... all men as well and then the light goes off in my little brain.


Pendleton Marine Base is just north of Oceanside and when I say just north I mean that they abut. So it makes sense but as I said is a little surreal as we see all these men getting haircuts. There are at least 7 barber shops within a three block area. That has to be one of the highest per capita ratios in the country. While the family waits for the pizza I walk to a convenience store and buy beer, munchies and cereal and see three cop cars on the parking lot in the process of checking the I.D.s of some people as they arrest the others. All together I am not at all sure of our decision but... we are here. The town has a similar feeling to Daytona Beach, 3000 miles away.

The next morning I wake up on cloudy breezy southern California November to see about 30 surfers outside our glass doors bobbing on some gentle waves in their wet suits waiting for their waves and... everything is OK. Sandy and I walk up and down the beach for about a mile. Oceanside is the home of the longest wooden pier on the west coast and we of course walk out to the end of it and look back at our unit which is on the far north end of the beach before a little inlet and the Marine base. I am hoping the haze is going to burn off but it seems like it might be real clouds which kind of sucks.

I take the family out to breakfast and after eyeballing a few diners we find Mary’s Restaurant and immediately know we are home. I will review Mary’s later b seriously, it is one of the best breakfast places EVER and coming from me that is saying quite a bit. Looking around the time in the daylight it seemed less sketchy. it is not really a “charming” town but it is a highly functioning little resort town and very functional and as you got to the outskirts you could see it is really quite the little suburb of San Diego and Orange County. It has the “Surf Museum” for gosh sakes. There were diners, barbers, convenience stores, 4, pizza places, beach stores, a cigar store, a 10 screen cinema and few head shops. They even had the “Oceans 11” Casino. Everything a girl could need.
But the beach is the thing. they act like their beach, which they call “the strand” is internationally famous but it is not listed on Wikipedia (I checked). It is a really nice beach though and heavily populated all day long with surfers which is also fun. it is gorgeous in a way that only the Pacific can be. Endless, cold and churning. We were able to have place that was 50 feet from the ocean with just a small tide wall between us and the sand and that was cool and it was not that expensive. The beach area is a hodgepodge of multi million dollar homes, and thoroughly beaten up apartments and houses which will likely be torn down as the property values continue to go up. the weather was not so hot when we were there with highs in the high 60’s and a lot of clouds but that is weird for the area. We were able to swim in the Pacific in November in half wet suits and it is a nice slamming surf with 6 foot breakers, at least while we were there.
There is really nothing sketchy about the town. We came in on a night when everyone must be getting back on the base. The town was pretty quiet other then that and though i would not hit the bars with my wife there was nothing dangerous about them. My family and I found plenty to do and it was a convenient location from Disney to Sea World, to mexico if you wanted to hit it in a day and come home. All in all I would say it is an excellent and still affordable destination for a get away and the Diner review heartily recommends it as an economical option for a beach vacation.