Best RV Parks & Resorts near Harlingen, TX

The park is located on the southern end of South Padre Island. It’s a very popular RV campground with hundreds of sites and multiple loops. This very large site is a little overwhelming in size but offers a number amenities for the RV and camper community. The park has a new outdoor picnic pavilion with the bathrooms, outdoor showers, grills, and a huge picnic table area under a large canopy. They offer parking areas for boats and the camp has ample restroom and shower facilities. The sites have picnic tables, water, and electric. The sandy beach is huge and great for families. They provide lifeguards during the summer months. This park is very crowded on weekends and holidays and reservations for RV sites are highly recommended. Just outside the cafe they have pub but most of the restaurants and other sites are a few miles to the north by car or bike. This is also the dock for ocean site seeing boats. This may be a good choice for RVs looking for long term stays or locals enjoying a day at the beach.

We spent 8 days here for a vacation.  The sites are small, but level and include FHU's and cable.  It was very crowded, but still relatively quiet.  A lot of winter Texans spend the season here, as the weather is really nice in winter.  There are not many places to walk your dog, but they do provide waste pickup bags and there is a small dog park.  The campground is right on the bay and there is a wonderful restaurant on a pier that is walking distance.  You can also take tours of the bay via boat here.  The county beach is pretty close, and you can walk or ride the free city bus to the end of the line (a few minutes ride) and get off and walk to the beach.  Very nice beach with modern facilities. You can also take the free city bus (bus stop is at campground entrance) into S Padre island or over the bridge to the mainland.

The park was nice, close to the beach, and had pretty low traffic compared to the rest of the island. The roads weren’t great and needed to be resurfaced. I picked a premium site that didn’t happen to be very premium. While the location of the site was perfect, all of the sites around me had concrete pads but mine... (I guess they hadn’t upgraded my site pad yet) the online map was showing a finished park with a boardwalk, showers and restrooms right behind my site (hints: the reason I chose this site) but it was all still under construction and not available for access. Other than those minor issues, it was an okay experience and for the size of the park, it was pretty quiet.

Great new RV resort close to everything, easy access, and Fiber optic internet.
We really enjoy the large heated pool. Our dog enjoys his walks to the dog park.
It's a short drive to the beach and SpaceX is close, we just watched the latest test flight.
A big plus is a space between lots here, your neighbors are not 5 ft away like the island parks, here it is more like 50 feet.
Our lot has room for our truck and a picnic table.
We learned how to play Pickle Ball- what a hoot and good cardio also.
Plenty going on to stay busy-we took a dolphin watching trip and saw plenty of them.
Next up is fishing from the pier,

Check-in was a breeze. The lady in the front office was very nice, and told us everything we needed to know about the resort. 

The one thing I absolutely love about Tropical Trails(if I had to pick one) is that the spaces between sites are some of the largest I've seen. It's so refreshing not to be right on top of your neighbor, even if they are super nice(which ours were). 

Some of the other benefits that I thought were noteworthy: 

High Speed Internet(ethernet from the pedestal) was very fast(over 100mbit). No issues with multiple 4k stream, and/or Zoom/Teams calls. It's been an absolute joy to carry out my daily work without any network disruption. 

Cleanliness of the park is incredible, staff is more than welcoming and ready to address any needs. 

Gated access with PIN code entry is a plus, even though the area seems very nice, and somewhat remote. 

They provide you with a newer(and clean) picnic table and a nice covered fireplace(and wood!). 

If I had to find something negative to say it'd be that I wish there was more grass and less dirt between the sites. 

That said, it's a pretty new park, and I am sure they're working on that. Also, this is TX, not MN. I bet it's harder to get grass to grow due to lack of precip. 

They have planted a lot of palm(and other) trees, but they're still growing so there isn't much shade at the moment. 

There are train tracks on the north end of the resort, and we were very close(as close as you can be) to them. Train seems to roll through at about 1030pm every night, but you honestly don't even notice after the first night. 

We kept extending our stay by a few days here, a few days there as we didn't want to leave, but alas, people are finding this place, and we weren't able to keep our spot any longer. 

We're heading to FL very soon, but we'll definitely be back to Brownsville and we won't even consider another RV resort.

We arrived at check-in time & was told to sign in on a waiting list. They called names by yelling out the door. Waited about an hour to finally check in & was told to fill out 3 pages of info (I could have been doing during the wait time). However staff was friendly & obviously overwhelmed.

Campground was okay. We were in D26 which was alright. Slight leveling of the RV needed since no concrete pads on Dodson St. No trees or shade. Everything got pretty dirty. Windy & hazy in January. We work remote & data service was tough to get. Lots of people seemed to always be changing sites as they said they extended their trip longer.
Overall it was a decent campground but I’d prefer to head to Florida.

Very busy and popular CG with the local fishermen. Some sites on the water way. Those are very busy with locals walking through the sites to fish and tons of road traffic to the boat launch. We stayed in the area divided by foliage. Much quieter and a lot less traffic. Had a beautiful view of the Laguna Atascosa sanctuary behind us. 30/50 amp service with full hookups. All sites are back in and gravel but easy to level our 40ft 5th wheel.
If you have dogs be careful. While we were there they were having a problem with the Javelinas. A pack attacked our neighbor's dog and bit the owner as she tried to save her pug. A day later we were chased by them at our site when we were out with our dogs. Carry a club of some sort. I scared them with a loud dog whistle. The rangers were notified and they contacted animal control.