Rutherford Beach Dispersed Camping

This is a great spot that can easily accomodate at least 5 big rigs on hard pack sand (actually, it's not sand but crushed shells). There are two outhouses and orange fences where the sand is too deep. The beach is not super clean, lots of trash brought by the tides (we picked up a garbage bag full in 15 minutes) and the water is not very inviting... However, there are tons of beautiful shells at low tide. Very quiet at night. The drive to get there is very nice through the bayous (lots of birds!). A local told us that there used to be 35-40 houses by Rutherford Beach, but only 3-5 remains after Katrina...

You can't beat this place for the price. Heck it wouldn't be bad if you had to pay. Stayed here in January and pretty much had it to ourselves. Plenty of beach to park on and the tides didn't really have a chance of getting close to us.

Make sure that you stock up on supplies before you come though as there isn't really a good option for groceries. Local police I chatted with said that we could stay as long as we wanted but I certainly wouldn't abuse the privilege of staying here.

Some trash to be cleaned up but mostly just heaps of shells to find! Definitely worth the trip down there.

We read a review of Rutherford Beach on Campendium and decided to check it out. It sounded too good to be true, but it was awesome! What a find!

I am always a little nervous when we take our coach off-road, so when we arrived we unhooked the CRV and drove down the beach. There was a hard-packed sand “road” that was smoother than many a highway we’ve traveled and a broad area of pretty firm sand to park on just above the high tide line. The beach is easily a mile long with plenty of spots to pull off and it was nearly deserted! We picked our spot and got settled in. We had a lovely sunset and were set to enjoy several days of beachfront living! Whoohoo.

And that was the last decent weather we would see. Lol. Leave it to Mother Nature to throw us a curveball. We got rain along with days of dense fog, lightning and thunder, and wind and one tornado watch. We timed our walks around the weather and still a lot of fun. We beachcombed for hours and loved all the shells. Some days we were completely alone and on others there would be maybe one other RV or a few locals fishing. The cows in the nearby field were our closest neighbors. With the fog, we literally couldn’t see anybody else, so it felt like we had the place totally to ourselves. (See our blog post for more pictures.)

There isn’t much in the way of shopping nearby, so stock up before you get here. The beach really could use a concerted cleanup effort. We picked up two bags of garbage, but there are no cans available to dispose of trash. There are two port-a-potties which had just been serviced and were immaculate.

We had 2 bars of Verizon 4G unboosted and 4 bars boosted.

Nice quiet beach camping spot. The beach road is quite firm but gets soft nearer to the water. Didn't want to get stuck if rain came so I chose a spot on the dune side of the beach road. Lots of seaweed and garbage wash in every day and the tides can be extreme so be alert. I cleaned up my site as best as I could considering there are no trash containers. There was a fire pit full of bottles and nails so I took care of that. Some local good samaritan came by and picked up a ton of garbage god bless them). Great shelling and good spot to let your dogs off lead and have fun. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Starry skies and lots of oil rigs lit up make it really nice at night. There is a store about 5 miles away. High prices but nice folks and has all the basics and a nice selection of cajun specialties.

Thanks to campendium we found this jewel treasure. 28ft Airstream on the beach was a piece of cake. Yes the beach is in need of cleaning, but oh the spaciousness. Beautiful evening lites, awesome beach walk in the morning. If we come this way again, you know we'll be there.

This is a beautiful place to camp, but it is NOT meant for really large rigs. We thought we would be safe pulling just off of the hard pack road, but we immediately went in up to our axles. We called five different tow companies, and none of them were willing to come pull us out, even though we were right off the hard pack. We were on our own! Drove our jeep to the local hardware store, bought two shovels and some plywood, and went to work. We got out, but it really put a damper on what otherwise would have been a lovely stay.

We didn't see the garbage on the beach that some other campers have talked about, which was nice, but you do have to be prepared gulf water. It is not clear and pretty, but the beach sand is very nice, and there are a TON of shells.

I thought about giving it 4 stars for the sheer amount of garbage. I stayed on July 6th. Very quiet at night except for the waves crashing. Porta potties and a couple of dumpsters (though it seems no one uses them). There were two outdoor rinse showers, but I didn't see if they worked. There were a few other campers and there are no real spots--just claim a piece of beach! I stayed in a Honda CR-V and had no trouble--just be smart and stay off the soft sand. Walk the area you're interested in first to see I you think your vehicle can handle it. Sherrie was sitting in the parking lot when I woke. As I understand it, they patrol a few times a day. Cows behind, oil rigs out in the Gulf, plenty of fishing on the way to the beach.

Loved it. Like alot if folks said walk the area first. Make sure your car or truck wont sink up. We got in by the beach fine. Watched a few folks get stuck, then freed. We got one stuck on our way out and a cop stopped and helped us push it out. So thank you to the local cop who helped, God bless you. The showers worked. Will return God willing.

We stayed here Jan 20-22. This was our first experience beach camping and omg it was awesome! The drive to the beach was picturesque. There are a couple bridges that stated a 10 ton limit. When you arrive at the beach, you can either turn left or right onto the sand. We stayed to the right because it was further from the water (we were nervous about tides, etc). We didn't get stuck but probably would have if we kept driving another 15-20 ft or so. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the greatest while we were there and the fog was so thick that we couldn't even see the Gulf from where we parked the RV but it was still worth it! The sun was shining when we left and it was beautiful. There wasn't any garbage on the beach like others have experienced but there were a few dead birds so we had to be careful about where we walked the dogs. Pet friendly. Very quiet this time of year.

We loved our stay here! It was our first time boondocking on the beach and it was amazing! A storm blew in when we were here but one of the locals was really nice and told us we might want to move our camper back a little in case the tide was high. We had no trouble driving on the sand. Falling asleep to the sound of the waves was our favorite part!