The $16 a night reflects what we paid for what was originally going to be a 34-day stay. Hard to beat that price for a campground with full hookups along the Gulf Coast. Although you cannot see the beach from the campground due to the landscape, even the sites furthest from the shore are only a seven minute walk to the beach. The campground has two main sections. One section has two short circular loops with short back-in sites (like spokes on the outside of a wheel), the other section has a mix of pull-throughs and back-ins. Our site was a pull-through site. The pull-through sites are close to each other, much like you would find at a private campground, but we didn’t feel it was tight. Each site is pretty level and has an asphalt pad. The roads and asphalt pads are old but decent. Between the two sections is a wooden bathhouse with bathrooms, shower stalls, and a small laundry room. There is a small playground near the circular loops and a larger one near the office and park buildings closer to the beach. There are three elevated wooden walkways that pass over the vegetation-thick dunes connecting the campground to the beach. With the exception of several elevated trash cans and a few benches and shaded tables, the beach is undeveloped. Being there in the off-season, it was never busy, and on many occasions we had it pretty much to ourselves. Dogs are allowed on the beach so long as they are on-leash. On the eastern side of the beach is a long rocky jetty frequented by fishermen. The jetty marks the western side of a deep channel used by huge ocean-traversing cargo ships to reach port. Every few days, ships transporting natural gas would use the channel to dock a few blocks behind the campground, where they would spend a few days unloading before leaving again. While it was fascinating to watch these ships come in, they would run their boilers for power constantly, creating noise on par with the road noise you typically experience with campgrounds near highways, so if road noise bothers you that could be an issue. The port also occasionally makes announcements through their loudspeakers and runs tests of their alarm systems. This is a nice park for bird watchers: in addition to being next to the Gulf of Mexico, the campground is just a few block from a bird sanctuary. During our stay we saw ducks, pelicans, black vultures, white cranes, and a few great blue herons. There are signs warning about snakes in certain areas of the park, but we never saw any (they may be more of an issue in warmer months). Mosquitoes are also prevalent but again weren’t too bad because it was still winter. There are plenty of wide-open grassy areas to walk dogs, though some areas can be squishy after a good rain. In terms of cell service, the best speeds I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna during our stay were between 30 to 50Mbps down and 15Mbps up, and those speeds were pretty consistent, resulting in nearly flawless video streaming. The one speed test I performed on my AT&T phone showed 50Mbps down and 5Mbps up. The campground offered WiFi but we never tried it. Freeport is the closest town with any amenities; their main supermarket is about a 13 minute drive from the campground. But if you need to do any serious shopping, you’ll want to make the 30-minute drive to the town of Lake Jackson, which is where we usually went to restock on both groceries and propane. Unfortunately, we had to cut our stay about a week short: the historic winter storm forced the campground to shut off the water, and the area was without power for several days. Campground staff did their best to handle the situation, but we decided it would be best to relocate. We feel like we have unfinished business with this campground - and we did enjoy our time there - so we hope to be able to come back.
3 ans depuis