In late July, we went to Sea Rim State Park. It was a really neat drive to get to the park. You go past the shipping channel on the Sabine River and through an oil refinery. It makes it really difficult to concentrate on the driving. There is a tiny town called Sabine Pass about 5 miles from the park. There is a gas station with a great convenience store that sells good pizza, a diner we didn't try, a fire station, and a high school. Most of the houses were on stilts. The road to the park is a long dead end road. It goes through Texas state wildlife preserve, the state park, and a federal wildlife sanctuary. There is also a house with a helicopter parked in the yard.
The park was well maintained. The camping loop was tiny, but the spaces on the front half were well spaced out. The back half looked more crowded. We had site 13 which was right by the boardwalk to the beach. From our site, we could not really see the other campers. The sites are power and water only. There is a pit toilet and a rinse shower on the boardwalk. There is no sewer connections on that side of the park. The dump station is about a half a mile down the highway on the other side of the park. There are no hoses so make sure you have a freshwater hose available to rinse after you dump.
The day use area of the park is big with lots of picnic tables in shady spots. There is a pedestrian only beach in the center with drivable beaches on either end. You can camp directly on the beach if you want to. There are probable times the tide goes up to the dunes, but it didn't get close while we were there. You can also bring your own horse and ride on the beach. There was a big group of riders one day. We saw them leaving, sadly we didn't get to see them riding. The beach is nice and sandy. The water is also sandy. It stays shallow quiet a way out and is warm enough to be comfortable, but not so warm it feels nasty. There are quite a few birds to watch. Fortunately people don't feed them so they don't mob when food is around. I enjoyed the beach and the park. There were no trails in this park to walk on. The boardwalk they had was destroyed. There are supplies there to build a new one. I am guessing they are waiting til this winter to start construction. Building a boardwalk in an alligator filled marsh in the summer during mating season is probably not a good idea.
The section across from the camping and day use area is where the dump station and maintaince areas are. There is also a cabin for rent and 2 boat launches for the paddling trail. They have a great map for the trail and it looked appealing, but there were 6 alligators handing out by the docks. I would be picky about what kind of boat I used on the trail... definitely not an inflatable one.
One afternoon we went to Sabine Pass Battleground historical monument. There are picnic tables, where we sat to eat lunch. We watched the shrimp boats head out to fish and watched a tug maneuver a giant ship. The monument has many signs that describe the importance of that river entrance during the civil war through world war 2. There were a couple battles in that river and several ships were sunk. The town around it got wiped out because of typhoid but it remained an important shipping area. We drove down another dead end road to see some of the shipping processing terminals and saw a lot of complicated yards and some tug boats. It was tight turning around at the end, but there were some fishermen and crabbers at the last bridge before the road ended in a wildlife sanctuary.
The sea breeze was constant at the park. It was a challenge cooking on the propane grill the first night. After that, I used charcoal in the fire pit to cook. I appreciated the matchlight charcoal and firestarters. It was great sitting around the fire and looking up at the thousands of stars. We went out on the beach and star watched over the ocean and stood on the boardwalk and watched the lights of the oil refinery. Sunsets were nice over the wildlife preserve and reflected on the beach and ocean, but the sunrises were really worth getting up for. That was the most beautiful time of day first thing in the morning. I watched the sunrise, saw the birds start hunting for breakfast, and spent peaceful alone time on the beach. One morning, I caught someone doing yoga right by the water. I gave her a wide berth so she could enjoy her privacy. I would definitely go back here. 
