Inks Lake State Park Campground

Was here in April and the wildflowers were stunning. Walked all the trails, great birding, and went kayaking too. They have a playground, ice cream stand, firewood, beach volleyball, fields, and more for occupying kids. There are also cabins. Great little park for a weekend or as a base for regional attractions like the nearby caverns.

Campsites were great value. All have at least a little view of the lakes and some shade, with water at the site. The bath houses had well designed shower stalls with gloriously hot water and high pressure.

Planned as a little stopover but ended up staying almost 2 full days.

Bathrooms/showers were down except for 1 at north end of park. Office was borderline hostile when called. Road construction noise right next to us. Sites were sooooooo not level. On hills and most bad cornering to get into them. Everyone was using several wood blocks to get level. Was looking forward to fishing but didn’t see one fish jump let alone bites; hasn’t stocked in two years and that was just catfish. Just was an overall let down. I have been impressed with all other Texas state parks, but this one not at all.

Campground was in good working order.

Shower was clean and worked well. Accessible to site 089 with short walk.

General store was well provisioned and staff were very friendly.

Staff were driving by on a routine basis to facilitate emptying trash and ensuring that campsites were being appropriately utilized (Correct # of vehicles / tents, etc. ).

Site 089 - DO NOT RECOMMNED - #1 - everything (picnic bench, fire pit, etc.) was on the opposite of the camper from every site we have ever stayed out. Pad is awkwardly shaped and horrible to back in to. As a result of the awkward layout, my camper awning was over the next site's pad. Their site's fire pit was behind my campground.

Would stay at the campground again - not at site 089.

This is a very large park with over 300 camping sites. True, there is swimming, biking, kayaking, and hiking, so there is lots to do. If that is what you seek, this may be your place. But if it is quiet and lots of greenspace, look elsewhere. The sites are situated on the side of the park by the entrance road so during the day there is traffic noise and occasional sirens. With over 300 sites mostly filled, there is vehicle and foot traffic on the park road most of the day. Most sites are quite close together though you may be lucky enough to snag one of the few that is not. There was no privacy in any of the sites I passed, and some barking dogs. Our site was perpendicular to our neighbors, and the back of our trailer about 12 feet from the side of our neighbors'. Granted, we came from the lovely McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, but the contrast was stark. Bottom line, not our best experience so we moved on after a night.

This is our second time staying at Inks Lake over the Christmas holiday, and while it's a little colder this year than last, we're still having a good time! Park is very busy, but we love the hiking and other fun options available here. We also love visiting the Longhorn Cavern park down the road, as well as the winery.

I'm mostly doing this review because I couldn't find any info on this site before I booked it and spent a few months kind of concerned about it. There is a line in the campsite details "Parking Obstructions Horizontal (Road To Facility): Both". Though I could gather from context that parking in this site might be challenging, I couldn't get a handle on exactly what that meant. Everything else about it (lakefront, near Devil's waterhole and bathroom) seemed great so I booked it anyway. And it is a great site, aside from the traffic noise during the day (this section is very close to Park Road 4) and its parking quirks.

But...the "parking obstructions"...there are trees very close on both sides of the parking pad, and about 10 feet behind. There is also a fairly low branch on the tree right at the entrance to the pad. Parking our 28' travel trailer was totally doable once we got the right angle, but I don't think anything taller could have fit under the low branch. It also would have been much more difficult if the people with site directly across from us had been there at the time--as it was, we could use their driveway as extra runway since it angled the same way. It also would have taken some very precise positioning to get it so we could use both the awning and the slide, as we backed up almost to the tree in the back in order for the slideout to clear the tree on that side, but the tree on the other side was still in the way of the awning. Not a big deal, we'd rather have the slide than the awning, and the driveway sloped so sharply on the entry side there was nowhere to set anything under the awning if we had gotten it out anyway. So smaller trailers, tent campers, no-slide campers...this site is lovely. Anything larger than 25', 5th wheels, slideouts...it may not work for you.

So, I hope this info helps someone else. :)

We stayed at this park for two nights and left at the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Our site was level side to side but sloped down towards the lake. There was a lot of space on the driver's side of the trailer between our site and any neighbor. Our campsite backed onto an inlet of the lake. I had 4 bars with ATT. The staff was great and we rented kayaks one morning. Kayaks were good and actually had seats with some rear cushioning and back support. We paddled to the Devil's Waterhole and watched people jump off the rocks. We had a nice time on the lake.
They don't have FHU but the dump station has two sewer holes so that helped because it was a busy time.