corona del mar: calm water, tide pools

Corona del Mar gives you two beaches with two different jobs: calm water for swimming, and tide pools for the kids who would rather poke at things.

Corona del Mar sits at the south end of Newport, tucked below the bluffs, and it is one of our favorites for a reason that is hard to beat: the water here is calmer than most of the open coast. The east jetty at the harbor entrance softens the swell, so Big Corona is a gentle place to swim, and Little Corona, just around the point, is a tide pool worth the walk. The bluff-top village above, with its cafes along Pacific Coast Highway, means coffee is easy to grab on the way down.

big corona: the calm-water beach

Big Corona is the main beach, the wide one below the parking lot at the end of Marguerite Avenue. Because it sits inside the harbor mouth, behind the jetty, the waves are smaller and the water is friendlier for kids than the surf farther up the coast. There are restrooms, fire rings you can claim for an evening, and lifeguards in summer, which makes it an easy call for a family day. On the harbor side you will see boats coming and going through the channel, and on a calm morning the water near the jetty is about as flat as the open ocean gets in Newport.

The catch is the same one every good Newport beach has in August: parking. The lot at the bottom fills early, often before mid-morning, and the meters run all day. Come early, or be ready to take a street spot up on the bluff along the residential roads and walk down the ramp. The walk down is short and easy. The walk back up, with gear and tired kids, is the part to plan for, which is the whole argument for not over-packing.

little corona: the tide pools

Little Corona is the smaller cove just south, reached by a paved path down from the end of Poppy Avenue. This is the tide pool spot. At low tide the rocks open up into pockets of water full of anemones that close around your finger, hermit crabs hauling their shells, small fish darting in the shallows, and sometimes a sea star or a sea hare if you look patiently. The big offshore rock, Arch Rock, sits just out from the cove and gives the whole place its shape. It is part of a marine protected area, the Crystal Cove conservation area that runs south from here, so it is look-but-do-not-take, no collecting shells or animals, which is exactly how you want kids learning to treat a place like this.

A few honest notes for the tide pools:

• Check the tide chart. The pools only reveal themselves at low tide, ideally a minus tide. A high tide turns the whole thing into just a small rocky cove with nothing to see.
• Wear something on your feet. The rocks are sharp, slick with algae, and unforgiving. Flip-flops slide off; a water shoe or an old sneaker is the move.
• Go slow and look. The longer you stand still over one pool, the more starts moving in it. The life is there; it just waits out anyone in a hurry.

how to do both in one morning

The move is to set up at Big Corona, swim and sit through the warm part of the morning, and time a walk over to Little Corona around low tide. The two beaches are a short distance apart by the streets up top, so you can leave your main setup and wander over light, or pack up and shift the whole operation. Splitting the morning this way means nobody gets bored: the swimmers get their calm water, the pokers get their pools.

This is where carrying light pays off. The kit packs onto your back in one carry, so the walk down the ramp at Big Corona, and the path over to Little Corona, does not turn into three trips to the car. The full pouch clips to the chair's back and holds the sand free towel and the day's essentials, and the cup holder takes the coffee you grabbed up in the village. When you fold up, the sand free towel actually lets the sand go before it gets in the car.

If you want to build a longer day around it, Crystal Cove and its own tide pools are just south down Pacific Coast Highway, and we mapped the wider stretch in our California coast guide. Corona del Mar rewards an early start and a checked tide chart. Plan around both and you get the two best parts of this stretch of coast in a single morning. Tag us @sunyvibesig if you find a good pool.