Stephen F. Austin State Park Campground

Pros:
All RV sites pull through with water/elec/sewer. Quiet. Great tree covered trails that are maintained by very friendly volunteer "Dennis". Park is off the beaten path but easy access to I-10 and town of Sealy. SFA history of the area and 1/2 off admission to The San Felipe de Austin museum - worth it, even for this native Texan. Attwater Prairie Chicken National Refuge just 20 min away and was delightful - actually saw a critically endangered Prarie Chicken. Looks like they are about to finish the brand new headquarters. Open dawn to dusk.

Cons:
no wifi, very low water pressure - we had to fill our fresh water tank and use our water pump to take a shower (2nd day the park showers didn't have hot water). Several untreated fire ant beds on site

All RV sites in this campground are pull through and full hookups. Be aware the sewer system is quite old and prone to backups so be ready to use the dump station instead, this was confirmed by a park ranger. All sites have 30-amp and 20 amp electric plugs. Sites range from heavily shaded to virtually no shade at all. Some sites need a decent amount of blocks to get an RV level side to side. Front to back seems fine. Pads are all blacktop, but really old and starting to crumble, which I kind of like as they are sun bleached white and not supper hot black.

Campground has a dedicated RV area and a dedicated Tent area. It borders a golf course which is part of the same park the campground is in. R/V campsites are pretty close together, but “end to end” since they are all pull through on a loop, so your passenger/patio side of your RV faces away from the road and not toward other campers.

There is a shower house with men’s, women’s, and family showers and bathrooms. On site park hosts sell firewood and ice.

Site 9 is well shaded pull through, get sun early afternoon 1pm to 3pm-ish in early July. Parking pad is bounded by polls on driver side and a tree on the passenger side. May take some carefully positioning to be able to get slides and awnings out. Side to side level required six inches of blocking, too much for the easy tire roll-up levelers, front to back was no issue.

The sites are nicely spaced and the park is very quiet except for the occasional coyote howl. There is a good trail system where several trails could be accessed very near our site in the full hookup area. We walked among tall sycamore and cottonwood trees and saw lots of deer. Very enjoyable. The San Felipe de Austin museum which is right across the road from the park was fun and informative. We have lived in Texas our entire lives and learned things about our roots that we did not know. The museum is well set up and definitely worth a visit. The park office gave us a card to use to get half off admission prices and 20% off items in the gift shop. We camped here to be close to Sealy for a softball tournament and it was the perfect spot. The first week of December (on Saturday) Sealy had a festival during the day and a big parade at night. A word of caution - if you are not attending the parade and need to drive through Sealy, you will encounter lots of traffic and numerous closed streets in the downtown area. We thought we would never make it through the area to get to our game. But driving through the neighborhoods, we saw lots of beautiful festive lights and the parade looked awesome!

We booked on line the day before for a Friday & Saturday stay. Only one site left… now we know why. Even though it was a pull through it was tough to maneuver. We should have asked at checkin if there had been any cancellations. After we got set up we went for a walk and saw a few that shows available. By that time we were situated. It was quiet and it rained all night Friday and most of the day on Saturday so we really didn’t get to enjoy the trails. So, if site #9 is the only site available any you have anything more than a camper van or very small
TT, I wouldn’t take it.

I travelled here with a 35’ 5th wheel, long bed pickup and parked in site #23, a FHU PT site for $25/night with a TX SP Pass. Roads and sites were asphalt and it was easy to navigate. The sites were crescent shaped and most were shallow curves making it easy for large rigs to get into them. A few had a tree in a bad spot so you may have to back in if you have a longer RV. #23 had a huge yard space, but the picnic table and fire pit were fairly far from the RV (no big deal for me.) There was a ton of space between sites so it felt pretty private. It was really quiet even though it was Spring Break week and the park was almost full with lots of families. Bath house was clean. I didn’t use the showers but they did have a shelf and seat inside to put stuff. My site was somewhat unlevel and I used two boards under one side to get level. I noticed that many rigs had some kind of leveler on one side or another. 2 bars LTE with Verizon, lots of OTA channels, no wifi that I knew of. I really enjoyed this park. The camp hosts were very friendly and helpful. Go to Mesquite Mexican in Sealy for dinner. One of the best Mexican dinners I have ever had. I would definitely stay here again.

Got to the park around 2:00 PM and pulled up to the stop sign in the second lane to use the bathroom and check in. Found out from a not-so-kind park ranger that we could not park and loiter at the front of the office building. There was a sign to that effect that we missed as most state parks have you park in front of the check in office and there wasn't really anywhere else to park with our 39' fifth wheel in tow. Check in was alright, but there was confusion concerning our Texas State Park passes for Disabled Veterans, which we both received a few years ago at another Texas State Park. For our stay here, only one person's pass was accepted and that pass was good for 1.5 people. Another employee thought we should each be covered with our passes and tried to add the additional pass in the system, but since we were camping, versus day use in a car, we could only use one. So, we had to pay $7.50 park pass for our 3 nites stay. Then she had to show the young man checking us in the rule book that showed we were entitled to the pass even though we were non-residents. This is the first time our passes weren't accepted to cover us both. After that we headed to pull through site 21 with FHUs but only 30 AMP. The wood posts and trees in this site determine how/where you park your rig. We needed our 15’ sewer hose and used a donut as there’s no screw in for the sewer connection. Water pressure was okay at around 40 psi. We got quite a few OTA channels and 3 bars on Verizon having no problem with internet and making calls using our MiFi. Most of the sites here are very spacious and well laid out so your neighbors are not close to you. Site 21 is one of the most spacious and we had no problem fitting our 39’ 5th wheel and F-450 on the pad. The restrooms/shower house in the RV area was clean and there was ice for sale at that location. What we really enjoyed about this park was the abundant hiking trails that interweave with each other. We thought the golf course in the park would be open, but it had been sold to a private owner and would hopefully open to the public in a month or so. The camp hosts were very friendly and helpful. Overall, we enjoyed our 3 night’s stay.

Finding our way into the park was pretty hard, so we finally had to rely on the GPS to get us in. This is due to all the construction on I - 10. Turns out everyone else came in the same way, but the Park could do a better job of informing campers in advance what to expect. Getting out was easy as the eastbound ramp was open. Campsite are all very similar, with plenty of room. I didn't see a bad campsite. We were here two days but didn't unhook our travel trailer as there really was no where to go. We had good OTA signal out of Houston. And we just needed to unwind after 4 busy days in San Antonio. There are nice hiking trails. We were told the place is a mad-house on weekends so we were glad we avoided that.