Sea Rim State Park — Attraction in Port Arthur

BE AWARE: Massive mosquito Infestation at Sea Rim SP as of 12/2023 - and is an ongoing problem. Full details 👇🏼 Giving 4 stars because the park itself is clean and well maintained. The staff/rangers are friendly and helpful. We saw the rangers out every day checking on things and maintaining the property - which was excellent. They all deserve 5 stars! But dropped a star because potential guests NEED to know about the mosquito situation and the state website should add it as a warning for this campground (like states do with wildfires/burn restrictions and other important things). Upon arrival, just rolling our window down at the check in, we were swarmed by mosquitoes rushing in to our B van. You can literally not be outside without DEET and even then, we recommend long sleeves, pants, socks and a netted hat would be ideal. Make sure you cover as many of your outside vents on your rig as possible - the mosquitos will come in through your furnace/fan vents and any other tiny fissure they can find. Yes - covering those vents will also make your rid muggy and humid inside. 🤷🏼‍♀️ The mosquitoes are worse. We booked and stayed 4 nights. As full-time RVers for 2+ years, we have stayed in all kinds of places, climates and circumstances. I've never had an issue with this many mosquitos - anywhere. We literally couldn't leave our rig, absolutely couldn't cook outside (we did the first night, but plan to be cooking and eating inside for your sanity and health), and we definitely couldn't build a fire. Carrying trash to the bins makes you a target and you'll literally be covered in mosquitoes, like they are glitter someone through on you (but if glitter sucked your blood 😱). We saw multiple rigs arrive and leave before their first night started (it's that intense). Every night before bed, we'd kill as many mosquitos as we could find in the rig (make it a game so it is less creepy to think about). But by our fourth night we clearly had hundreds of mosquitoes hiding out in our 21 foot van. Turned our AC on every night to keep the rig cold enough to, hopefully, make them less active while we slept. The beach itself is beautiful and the coastal winds keep the mosquitoes at bay there, but that's the only reprieve. There is a boardwalk over inland water that was also enjoyable and fairly mosquito free. Those were the only times we got to experience "the outside". Our site had partial hook ups, no issue there. The dump station is actually a little less than a mile from the campground (not on site) and as expected, it is a mosquito nightmare to use. There is virtually no cell service and the Wi-Fi is too slow to be useable. Which is crazy bc you can't be outside and then there is nothing to do inside. If you book this park - download content and...

We checked in on Thanksgiving Day. Had planned to stay until Saturday but checked out the next day. We originally wanted to stay at Galveston Island State Park but it was booked up and we were told that Sea Rim had space as well as being a prettier beach. That is SO not true!

First off, you have to drive through a refinery to get there. Air pollution is so thick you see a haze in the sky. This is not a pretty area at all. We were told it was more scenic than Galveston... again, not true.

The beach was not white sand as we were told. It was grey and littered with trash. The water was gross looking from all the refineries and oil ships/rigs in the area. I can't believe people fish this water. ICK!

We did the campsite with water/electric hookups. Wish we had done the primitive camping on the beach because the mosquitoes were so bad around the campsite we couldn't do anything outside of the tent. We were never told there was an issue w/ mosquitoes. Right as we started to cook dinner they started swarming. It was so bad we grabbed what food we could and dove into the tent. We were literally picking mosquitoes out of our food so we could eat something. The swarming was so bad we could hear the buzzing of them outside like a beehive. If we had to go outside for something we wore hats and shirts wrapped around our heads as protection. It was like something out of a horror movie. I really felt like we should have been warned about this when making the reservation. It's almost Dec. so we weren't thinking about mosquitoes. They were even in our vehicle! It was insane. We believe had we been on the beach it might not have been so bad because of the constant wind and no stagnant water. When I mentioned this to the Rangers they both said that it's good we hadn't done that because the tide came up so high that night we would have been swimming. Ugh!

There's also no showers here (which we knew ahead of time) but the bathrooms are basically cemented-in port-a-potties so there's no sink either. Just the toilet and a hand sanitizer dispenser.

If you plan on camping here be prepared for an almost primitive set up. You get a fire pit, picnic table (no arbor), and a post w/ hooks for lights/garbage bag, etc. Then there's the water/electric hook up. So basically just one step up from primitive camping.

This place is more fitting for the RVer's.

The only redeeming thing about this place is the Gambrusia Nature Walk which is a boardwalk that goes through the marsh. You can see lots of ducks, herons, crabs, etc. In warmer weather you will also see Gators.

The rangers here were very nice and easy going.

I highly recommend people go to Galveston Island State Park instead. You'll...

We enjoyed camping here because it has bathrooms and used to to have "showers". But our visit this week was disappointing because we discovered they removed a shower and installed a fish cleaning station. That leaves the pier showers. So we went there and discovered you have to pull the knob that is approximately 7 foot high. Have you ever tried to rinse off with one arm straight up at all times? And if you are short...good luck. It's really stupid to not have showers at all at this state park. Then the one "shower" you have, you make it difficult to use. Also, can you at least put a solar light in the bathroom? Not fun to find out at 2am that you can't see a dang thing. But the BEST PART was we had been there since apprx 12 noon. Immediately set our camp up. 2 tents. 2 adults, 2 children. ALL day park rangers drove by and waved, smiled. Until 8:30 at night, completely dark. Going to bed. Kids in their tent. And a "wonderful" ranger drives by and asks what we are doing. My husband said camping and getting ready to go to bed. He has been putting out our fire. Mr. Ranger with an attitude says, you have to move your camp, it's too close to the dunes. What?! 8:30 at night. Mosquitoes are out, kids asleep and we have to move?? Now? When NO OTHER RANGER had said anything ALL DAY!! so hastily in the night we can't see and had to move 2 large tents. Our tent collapsed during the night because we couldn't reset it up well in the dark with the mosquitos biting and wind had picked up and was blowing like crazy. Good going State of Texas. I'm not sure we...