Quintana Beach County Park Campground

Beach is nice and has a beautiful boardwalk plus not crowded. Campground is clean and ok maintained. It may be a really awesome place at a different time of the year. Mosquitoes are just unbearable. You either need to be on the beach or in your RV. Plus it is so wet from rain from prior weeks that the sites are flooded. It is also next to an oil refinery which is ok if you look the other way. Big boats come in which may be a sight for some. Beach area gets a bit trashy when walking towards the boat entrance area. Seems the beaches of Texas have a lot of trash. People seem to just not pick up the crap they bring. 😕

I timed it perfectly - a front was pushing through just as I arrived but it's the beach so it's still pretty and fun. There weren't more than 6 other campers so it was very quiet. The prior review is excellent and there isn't really anything I can add other than some details about checking in -

Since I was going to arrive around 6 PM on Monday evening, I called as the confirmation suggested. I got a recording saying the office is closed on Monday. HUH, how will I get the gate code??? I showed up and the gate was down but there was a number posted for the hosts. I called and they let me right in.

The park ONLY allows registered campers to enter when the office is closed. The office is in a cluster of buildings - go straight instead of turning left at the sign for the campground. I posted a photo of the instructions. During office hours Tuesday - Sunday go to the office to check-in. On Mondays and outside of business hours, check-in with the hosts.

The massive beach, pier, and jetty are pretty amazing with HUGE ships passing by on a regular basis. But just north of the campground is an immense liquid natural gas loading facility with huge LNG so you have this huge industrial complex on one side and beautiful beach on the other.

My T-Mobile 5G download was over 100 & upload 25-60. AT&T 4G was 41/16.

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.

We were pleasantly surprised by how nice this park is! Very friendly staff, beautiful grounds, beautiful beach. The boardwalk to the beach was another nice surprise. Everything was in very good condition. We biked all the way down the beach and back. At this time of year the campground and beach were uncrowded. The ships coming into the port across the way were very amazing to watch. I downloaded an app that identifies all the ships coming into Freeport and vicinity! This campground is a little bit out of the way but worth it!

Lovely, quiet and clean park with easy access to the beach. Close proximity to birding areas is great, but be aware that it is also right next to a large industrial area, as well as a shipping canal. Noise from the huge shipping vessels was sometimes annoying, but it wasn't 24/7. Grounds were well-kept, facilities clean. If you don't have coins for the laundry the machines are connected to an internet payment system that uses Google Pay or Apple Pay (never seen that at an RV park before). The office person was friendly and the building has displays of live marine animals (fish, turtle, crab, etc.) and snakes. There are a good many signs that warn campers there are snakes in the area- perhaps the ones on display were caught here at the park. There were also two adorable cats in the office the day were arrived. There are nice wooden pavillions and playground for the kiddos. The boardwalk down to the beach even had showers to rinse off the sand before returning to the park. If you're a birder, make sure you check out the Quintana Neotropical Bird Sanctuary right down the street. There's a lovely little garden area and a three-story story lookout tower to get great views of the gulf. We even picked up a free copy of a little newspaper put out by the Galveston Ornithological Society that had lots of great birding info. On our first two days here we had Marbled Godwits right in our "backyard". We also visited the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge during our stay here- plenty of birds and aligators! Wifi wasn't stellar and you have to let them know at the office that you want to use wifi, so they can set it up for you, then "sign in" to their network with credentials. We ended up giving up on the wifi and just using our phone hotspots. Great T-Mobile cell service here. All-in-all a nice experience at this park.

Since we could not work in the office during COVID-19, we decided to work from Quintana Beach County Park. We had a great experience. The park was nice, clean, relaxing, quiet, and a decent amount of space between sites (completely opposite of the campgrounds in Surfside across the ship channel). They had planted wildflowers and mowed around them which made it very pretty. A fair amount of palm trees was nice to have. The boardwalk and decks were very nice and in good condition. Unlike most beaches, there were at least a dozen lines of waves vs 3-4 like usual. This made it much nicer to look at and we enjoyed the extra noise of the waves while walking. The WiFi was amazingly good with downloads and uploads around 7-9 Mbps for Monday - Thursday; of course, there were only 15 sites of 56 filled and I'm sure that help because it was not as consistent for Zoom video on Friday when more people were there. The hosts were also nice and helpful.

The only negative (and it's minor once you know about it) is that once a week on Monday mornings (sometimes very early and once at noon), a very loud horn is blow. It is an emergency test from the nearby (but not that close) chemical plant.

This park is easy to get to and easy to navigate. No tree branches to dodge. (But also no shade.) All utilities work well. Over 70 OTA TV stations available. The back in sites are short but nicely spaced. The pull through sites are longer but close together. There are lights in the park that keep it pretty lit up at night, so be prepared for that. The showers, restrooms, and laundry area are rustic, but clean. Hosts are friendly and helpful.

The beach is nice, and this time of year you have it pretty much to yourself. The LNG plant and ship channel are right next door, so there is lots of fun ship watching, but you also get some noise from the plant and the trains.

There are some hiking trails on site, and a bird sanctuary a few blocks away.

Nous nous sommes dirigés ici car la mer était trop agitée pour séjourner sur les plages du long de la Côté du Golfe.
Agréablement surprise, endroit très propre, bien entretenu et le personnel très accueillant. Les sites sont tous sur surface de ciment et tous de niveau. Plusieurs trottoirs mènent à la plage. Impressionnant aussi d'être à proximité de raffineries et d'un canal emprunté par les barges. À cette période de l'année pour seulement 22$/nuitée terrain avec les 3 services, aussi disponible laveuses et sécheuses (ayez de la monnaie car ils en ont pas à l'office). Seul petit bémol c'est l'odeur de l'eau connecté au VR; mais c'est négligeable.

Nous reviendrons ici sans hésiter.

"We headed here as the sea was too rough to stay on the beaches along the Gulf side.

Pleasantly surprised, very clean, well maintained and very welcoming staff. The sites are all on cement surface and all level. Several sidewalks lead to the beach. Impressive also to be close to refineries and a canal borrowed by the barges. At this time of year for only $ 22 / night on the ground with the 3 services, also available washers and dryers (have change because they do not have at the office). Only downside is the smell of water connected to the RV; but it's negligible.

We will definitely stay here again."