Latest update December 28th, 2016 1:27 AM
REVIEW: Lake Livingston State Park
This weekend’s home away from home is Lake Livingston State Park which is about an hour and a half or so North of Houston. We stayed in campsite #58 in the Piney Shores section of the park which is considered the “Premium Camp Sites”. What’s really nice is this section allows site specific reservations and cost $25 a night. Most State Parks allow reservations BUT do not allow you to select a specific site number until you arrive at the site the day of your reservation and then its first come first serve.
The Park Rangers here tell us the Site Specific Reservations is in its Beta stage. They’re testing it out in order to see how it takes with their visitors. In fact while we were hanging out doing the lazy camping day routine a Park Ranger stopped and asked us a series of questions in order to get our feedback. I really like the idea!
We pulled into camp and setup around mid day on Friday and walked around a bit while most of the campsites were vacant. We weren’t on the lake side sites since those had already been spoken for but we did take a look for future reference. It seems sites #57, #59, #61, #64, #65 and #67 were the magic numbers in this part of the park. They backed right up to the lake giving guests a nice sloped grassy area right down to the concrete bulkhead. Perfect for watching the sunset.
In the photo above you can see the grassy area and concrete bulkhead behind the prime campsite numbers I listed. That are is by no means for those sites only. There is a walkway for all guests to get down to that are in order to fish and/or take photos as we did one night.
Even though we weren’t on the lake side we still had a great view from our campsite. When the sun began to set it was nice to see it behind the silhouette of tall pine trees. We took a few photos form here and then raced down to the concrete bulkhead in order to get some unobstructed sunset photos.
Ahhh…. Now THIS is why I love camping! You just don’t get these views in the concrete jungle that is know as Houston. So peaceful and relaxing… oh and chilly! I could definitely feel the temp drop so we scurried back across the street to our site in order to get a campfire going.
After a nice chilly 38* night we got up to get our day started and have a little grub. Let me just say that the squirrels in this park are HEALTHY and by “healthy” I really mean fat! lol. As soon as they heard the rustle of a chips bag we had about 4 come out of the trees in order to pay us a visit. Not only squirrels but about 5 different varieties of birds came out too. You can definitely tell they’re used to being fed and know the routine.
The people across from us has a big group, they were in site #57 and they set their tents up on the lower grassy area behind the sites. You’re not suppose to do this as that area isn’t really designated as a camp site but they did it anyways and it wasn’t an issue. If you’re considering visiting this park then definitely remember site #57 and do they same!
Here’s our site #58 which includes 50 amp, 30 amp, water and sewage hookups. These sites are really for long fifth wheel trailers and RV’s so it’ll fit about 3 cars fairly easily.
One thing we noticed once we got setup was that the fire pit was placed pretty close to the road. This was really odd but the best I can gather is that it was moved here because of where it may have been had some low spots and retained water quite a bit and stayed muddy. At first we didn’t like the fire pit so close to the road but in the end it wasn’t a big deal. We got to chit chat with people as they passed by and such.
Each campsite included a pretty large mostly level tent pad where you can set up your tent and not have to be worried about sleeping on an incline or on top of a tree root. Ouch! In the photo above you can see the main electrical hookup box which I have tethered Libby to, an aluminum sewage dump box and a water spigot as well.
So in perfect fashion as I left out good detailed camp site photos in my last review and flooded the that review with photos of their great bath house I managed to post good campsite photos in this review but I completely forgot to snap some photos of the bath house here! Go figure. I’ll get it right eventually. I can say that I wasn’t impressed with the bath house at all. For such a nice location and well kept grounds I would have expected a bit more from their bath house. Was it functional? Yes. Was it comfortable? Not really.
This park is right up there with the best that I’ve stayed in so far. I will definitely come back here again especially with their new Site Specific Reservation System.
Reviews
Definitely one of may favorites in the Houston area. Site specific lakeside campsites can be reserved well in advance and often times it seems they are always booked! Plan way ahead and book one, you won't be disappointed.
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I like Lake Houston and Conroe, However, they are both shallow lakes and a bit dangerous. Livingston is deeper and bigger.