Labor Day Weekend Without the Parking Lot

Labor Day weekend is the one weekend a year when a coastal parking lot can beat you. Not the water, not the sunburn — the lot. You leave at 9, you arrive at 10, you circle for forty minutes, and by the time you've got the cooler out of the trunk somebody is already asking when you're going home.

So this is a planning post more than a recommendation post. The holiday weekend runs through Monday, September 7, and if you're going to the beach anyway, go early enough that it feels slightly unreasonable. Otherwise, here's how I'd think about it.

Go inland on Saturday and Sunday

The trails don't fill up the way the sand does. Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park in Lake Forest is free and close enough that you can be back before it gets hot, which is the whole trick with any inland hike in early September — start early, bring more water than you think you need, and turn around before anybody is miserable. We keep a running list of kid-friendly hikes if you want something shorter.

If the forecast is ugly, this is a good weekend for the things that are the same temperature no matter what. Great Park Ice in Irvine has public skate sessions, and the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana is the kind of place where a 9-year-old and a 14-year-old can end up interested in completely different rooms, which is fine. Check hours before you drive — holiday weekends shift them.

A note about Laguna

Pageant of the Masters is still running at the Festival of Arts grounds in Laguna Beach, which means Laguna Canyon Road and downtown Laguna are carrying show traffic on top of holiday traffic. If your plan involves the Treasure Island tide pools, that's still a beautiful morning — just don't schedule anything tight on either side of it.

The weekend after is the better weekend

This is the actual point of the post. September in Orange County is the reward for surviving August. The water stays warm, the marine layer usually backs off, the crowds go back to school and work, and the beaches quietly become locals' beaches again. Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point on a mid-September Saturday is a different place than Salt Creek on Labor Day.

So if you can move your beach day, move it. Put the cooler and the boogie boards on the calendar for the 12th or the 19th instead, and use the holiday weekend for the stuff that doesn't depend on a parking space — a farm morning at Zoomars in San Juan Capistrano, a walk through Los Rios, something with a fixed spot to stand.

And if none of that appeals: the honest answer is that a lot of families just stay home on Labor Day weekend, and that's a legitimate plan. Sprinkler in the yard, nobody in the car. Our free and cheap lists will still be there next weekend, when the roads are yours again.

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