a saturday at thousand steps

Some beaches you drive to. Thousand steps you earn.

Thousand steps is a small cove in South Laguna, tucked below the bluffs off Pacific Coast Highway. The name is an exaggeration. It is closer to 220 steps down a steep public stairway between two houses, easy to miss if you are not looking for it. But the count is not really the point. The point is that the climb keeps the crowds honest, and the beach at the bottom feels like a reward.

parking, and the part nobody tells you

There is no lot. Parking is metered street parking along Pacific Coast Highway and the residential streets above the beach, and on a saturday it fills early. Come before ten and you will find a spot without circling. Come at noon in July and you will not. Bring quarters or the parking app, read the signs twice because the time limits vary block to block, and give yourself the short walk to the stairway entrance near 9th Avenue.

This is the kind of beach where what you carry matters. You are walking a few blocks and then down a long flight of stairs, so a cooler and a folding wagon are not your friends here. This is exactly the day a 7.5 pound chair earns its place. It goes on your back, your hands stay free for the railing, and you are not making two trips down and back up.

the stairs

The stairway is steep and it is real exercise, especially on the way back up with the afternoon sun on you. Take it slow. There are a few landings to stop and look out over the water, and they are worth the pause. Going down, you will feel the temperature drop a little as you get closer to the sand and the air gets saltier. By the time you reach the bottom the highway noise is gone and it is just the cove.

A tip from doing this more times than we can count: pack light and pack smart. The full pouch clips to the back of the chair and holds the towel, water, sunscreen, and snacks, so the whole setup is one carry down those stairs. The umbrella, about 4 pounds, clips on too. One trip down, one trip up.

what is waiting at the bottom

The cove is wider than you expect and backed by tall bluffs that throw shade in the late afternoon. At low tide there are tide pools at the south end and a remnant of an old pump house you can wade out to. The water is clean and clear, the way South Laguna water tends to be, and on a calm day it is good for a long float.

The umbrella is worth setting up early. The twist-in sand anchor holds it steady in Laguna's afternoon breeze, which tends to come up off the water around two or three. Get it planted before the wind does, and you have shade for the rest of the day without chasing it.

stay for the light

The reason to make the climb back up later rather than sooner is the light. In the late afternoon the bluffs glow and the water goes gold, and the cove empties out as the day-trippers head up the stairs. Those last two hours are the quietest and the prettiest. Recline the chair, let the umbrella do its job, and let the beach come back to you.

If you are building a Laguna day, this is a good one to anchor it on. Corona del Mar and the rest of the Orange County coast are a short drive north, and we wrote about those in our California coast guide if you want to make a weekend of it.

When you climb back up at the end of the day, a little sandy and salt-dried, a towel that lets the sand fall off instead of carrying it home is the small mercy that makes the next saturday easier. Tag us @sunyvibesig if you make it down to the cove.