Chemin-A-Haut State Park — Hotel in Bastrop

I really want to be a supporter of Louisiana State Parks and I REALLY wanted to be able to say great things about Chemin-a-Haut but it was pretty disappointing.

The map of all the sites made it look like there was an enormous, winding Bayou (Bartholemew), with 4 awesome trails that would be full of adventure. Not at all.

We arrived with a vehicle so full of hiking/fishing aids, you would have thought we were going to climb the Himalayas! The place is MUCH, MUCH smaller than is portrayed. The trails are very short, lined with dead, burned trees, and the waterways were totally underwhelming. The pictures make the Bayou look like something from Blue Lagoon. More appropriately would have been the possibility of finding the Creature from the Black Lagoon!

It's not the Park's fault that we didn't catch any fish over 3 days--that's just bad fisherman's luck sometimes--but because the trails offered absolutely nothing AND the pool was open for VERY few hours, there was nothing else really to do but sit in the cabins (btw, FOUR very young lifeguards who didn't speak at all, remained in the office almost the entire HOUR that we were at the pool. There were no other guests at the pool but WE were there!).

The cabin, I have to say, was very nice! No complaint there. Nice kitchen, awesome beds, super, screened-in porch.

As unimpressed as the park was by itself, the staff in the Guard House seemed totally bored with their jobs and just stared at us with no concern or interest when we commented that things weren't going so well. The comment of one employee that it used to be nicer, was of no consolation at all.

Apparently, others felt the same way because almost everyone either no-showed or left early, and we were among only about 4 families on the site for the entire Labor Day weekend.

Unfortunately, a drive into Bastrop to find, at least a meal, was also a real bummer. There is nothing to do in Bastrop, as many businesses are totally closed down. We got lucky and happened upon Johnny's Pizza House after nearly an hour. The food was fantastic and the staff were awesome! They actually treated each of us to dessert because they felt bad about our park experience, ALSO saying it used to be really nice.

I want to give the state park system another chance but I will never go back to Chem-a-Haut again. Real...

French for "high road" (pronounced Sha-MEN-a-haw), we had almost the whole park to ourselves the week after 4th of July. Very hot and humid, which may be why very few people were there.... Stayed in a "deluxe" cabin (more like a house!) looking down on the Slough ("slew"), very peaceful and quiet. Kayaked on the Slough, the "Lake" (which is an oxbow dammed on both ends, fed by the Slough), the Chemin Creek (which flows into the Bayou), and the Bayou. The lake has a concrete kayak launch, but has no outlet to either the Bayou or the Creek. The Bayou Bartholomew is more like a river, with a sizable current. Looks like cafe-au-lait. The Bayou has a steep bank gravel boat launch, which is the "official" location to launch a kayak if you want to paddle upstream about 2 hours to get to the Creek where the old-growth cypress trees are. The famous "Castle Tree" (location 32.91380N, 91.83049W) shown in the park brochure is on the Creek (also called the cheminahaut bayou). There's a steep dirt bank kayak launch site on the Creek that is much closer to the Castle Tree. Drive on the rutted dirt road beginning at the deluxe cabin cul-de-sac about 0.4 mile to the Creek launch site located 32.907094N, 91.830714W (see picture). Paddle upstream about 20 -30 easy and very scenic minutes to the humongous Castle tree (see picture), passing many other old-growth trees in the Creek. We only saw one...

Beautiful peaceful park. We adventured here today to kayak up to the castle tree but would be disappointed (this is on us though for not doing our research better on a spur of the moment trip) the play grounds seemed very clean and you do have to pay to enter this park I think it was 2 dollars. It does however loose a star because there was not a clear path to the main kayaking attraction and there was no indicators of how high the water levels should be to actually enjoy the tree. (Something this park may want to look into.) we kayaked about a mile before putting in the gpa coordinates to the tree and then continued to paddle as hard as we could the next 2 miles up river. Turns out the water levels were so high that we couldn’t even see the opening of castle tree. It took approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes to kayak up river and 30 minutes to kayak back to the parking area. But it was fun and we ended up having a blast. I will say that when the water levels are this high it’s not a good idea if you are a...