Bolsa Chica State Beach is where you sleep. The sites sit on the sand south of Seal Beach, surf on one side and Pacific Coast Highway at your back, and they all go through ReserveCalifornia six months out. The gate takes factory-built, self-contained RVs only, so a conversion van, a cassette toilet, or a tent turns around there. Book the site first and the van second. The site is the part you can lose.
Across PCH, the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve runs a wooden boardwalk over Inner Bolsa Bay, salt marsh and mudflats worked by osprey and reddish egrets. It's day use only, a morning walk before you pack up rather than anywhere to park.
Booking the Bolsa Chica lot
Take a beach-side pad if you get the choice. Those run $70 against the highway row's $60, both with water and electric and a dump station on the way out. Sites are 20 feet wide and 30 to 40 feet long, and the 40-foot cap is firm, so measure before you book. Anything longer is an RV rather than a van. The coast works year round here, and the marine layer keeps the PCH side cooler than the inland basin.
The cove overnight is Costa Mesa's
Crystal Cove State Park and its Newport-coast cottages are worth the drive, but that overnight belongs to Costa Mesa. For bases beyond Long Beach, start with the California campervan landers.
When Bolsa Chica is full
Golden Shore RV Resort sits in the city at 101 Golden Shore, 77 full-hookup spaces off the I-710. It takes any rig, so it is also where you end up when the van you found is a conversion. A paved city pad is not the reason to come to the coast, but you will sleep.