Malaquite Campground

I travelled here with a 35’ 5th wheel, long bed pickup and parked in site #18, a BI site for $7/night with a Senior Pass. The campground is dry camping but has a dump station and threaded potable water pumps to fill your tank. I loved my stay here. While it is basically camping on a parking lot, just being close to the beach is what I loved. The road/sites are asphalt. The sites on the east do have a small amount of grass between sites, but on the west it is just asphalt and the sites back up to a dune. A large area behind the east side is open to the dunes by the beach. East side sites are very close together. My slide was only 5’ away from the neighbor’s picnic table. You can see the ocean from most of the sites. There are loops on both ends of the CG to be able to turn around easily. Backing in can be a bit tight depending on how the rig across from you is parked. Some picnic tables have covers on them along the east side. The ones on the west are totally open. There is no shade available which is good if you are running solar. The bathhouse was clean and there were individual rooms for the showers. I did not use the showers. Access to the beach is very easy and it is wide and flat. The Visitor’s Center is within walking distance and has recycling for all types of materials. The North Beach is open for camping and we saw several 5th wheels parked there. No cell signal or OTA in the campground. I was able to make calls on the upper deck at the Visitor’s Center and at the end of the pier in the campground. Only 2 bars LTE with Verizon. It was very quiet. I would definitely stay here again.

This is essentially just a parking lot but it's only 100 yards from the beach. It was sparsely populated while we were there until the weekend - the non-beachside sites rarely had anyone in them.

The beach side sites are very tightly packed. If you have loud neighbors, they'll be about 5 feet from your rig if they're at their picnic table. Unfortunately, we had very loud neighbors for the last couple of days. The ocean is clearly audible if you open your windows.

Cell service with ATT and TMobile was usuable on the download side with around 10mbps with a roof mounted Pepwave antenna. Upload speed wasn't usuable for practical purposes at 0.5mbps. We relied on Starlink while we were here.

There is a fresh water fill and dump station at the campground entrance.

I’ll start by saying we prefer the beach camping. However, this is a good port in a “storm”. The storm being high tides. For part of the 14 days on Padre Island, tides could have put our tires in the water. Decided to vacate the beach for higher grounds. The campground is a glorified parking lot. But for the location and the price, a good second choice.

Tide table printout available in the visitors center. Cel coverage was 0 to 1 bar most days.

We were in site 8 for 4 days. Sites are first come, first served and spacing varied from fairly well spaced to somewhat close, but appeared to all be fairly level. The beach side campsites were asphalt surrounded by grass and these filled up first. The campsites on the opposite side were basically just parking lot stalls and generally had several empty sites while we were there during the week. Showers were clean, if somewhat dated, but also rather chilly, i.e., no hot water. The beach was nice, but there was a lot of trash, debris and Man O’ Wars that had washed up. I found AT&T coverage to be essentially nonexistent here, without a signal booster. With out it, my iPhone fluctuated between no service and 1 bar, but no connectivity either way. However, with the booster, I was able to get 2-3 Bars of LTE service, with speeds up to 4.5 MB/s. Since there are no trees, satellite coverage is not an issue, so we didn’t try to get any OTA channels. When we pulled into the dump station, we noticed that one side had backed up on a previous dumper, so we used the other side, which worked fine. We notified the office, so presumably that has been resolved.

It's a beach parking lot with a bit larger spots for your RV or tent. Mostly concrete or gravel. There is a dumpsite with water. You have your own bench but you don't see the water from your campsite since it is blocked by sand dunes. It is dry camping, so yes, people do run their generators all hours. There are quiet hours after 10 I think. I chose this because I didn't want to be right on the beach where tides can come and go. First-come-first-serve. You can stay up to 14 weeks. Internet however is really bad. I have ATT, Verizon, and T-Mobile, all three were really bad. ATT was usable at times when it felt like it, but it wasn't reliable. If you climb up the sand dunes, you get better internet, the campground is blocked but if you work remotely, it's not really feasible to climb dunes with your laptop. The good thing about this park is that you can walk miles on the beach in each direction. Watch out for jellyfish, I saw many.

Stayed 2 week days here in April and park was 80% full with the nice sites mostly filled by noon. Campground has two areas : one side closer to dunes has 20 nice but narrow sites with bbq and sweet wooden pavilion over a large concrete picnic table. The other side is just open parking lanes with some scattered picnic tables. All sites easy walk to beach.
Flush toilets but cold water only showers. Area clean but very busy with lots of generators going during the allowed time. I would return but earlier in day.

The best part is the beach. From the campground you have miles of protected beach to walk. Unlike the rest of the Texas beach, vehicles are not permitted on the stretch by the campground. Ahhhhhh

April is the start of Turtle season so the rangers are out watching for turtles coming ashore to nest. Hope to see one.

Bird watching is fantastic. The near constant parade of pelicans is a real treat.

Cell phone coverage is none existant yet we have a Winegard 360+ with a 4g LTE antenna and were have enough data to stream YouTube and make calls. We are getting about 3 to 4 mbs up and down.

It was our first time camping at this beach. The campsite does have a park host and will help you out with any questions you might have. It is a first come first serve reservation kiosk.. You fill out your information on a preprinted envelope, pick an unoccupied spot, include payment, seal and drop in the box and you are all set! Get your campsite set and take a walk down to the beach(less then 5 min) for some fun in the sun!
They have sites on both sides. One side of the isle are grassed (beachside) sites and the other are paved. All sites have picnic tables. There are no hookups. They do have restrooms and showers and a separate open shower that is off to the side at the end to rinse sand off. There is no cell service so come prepared if you aren’t down lounging at the beach you have a few DVD’s to pop in.
If you are not up for the dry camping they do have nice size loop at either end to turn around safely. We had a great time and would definitely go back.