About an hour north of Houston, deep in the piney woods, is a little lake with an awesome swimming spot. It has clear water (albeit brown tea colored clear water) and a sandy bottom.

I don’t even want to advertise this find, because I don’t want it to get to popular and crowded…but oh well, here it goes…. drum roll please…. it’s at SAM HOUSTON STATE PARK.

It only costs a little bit to get a full day pass there. Follow the road until it dead ends into the lake. The swimming spot is to the left hand side.

This is a great spot for families with kids of all ages as there is so much to do there. They have a little snack shop, vending machines, kayak and paddle board rentals, ice for sale, and a toooooooon of picnic tables with grills to choose from. It seems like there are no bad tables to choose from there.

There is also a playground and lots of trails and other areas of the park to explore.

My wee one’s loved it so much that we opted to go there two days in a row!

I promise these photos don’t do it justice- this area is huge! And it has a floating dock thingie that’s easy to swim out to.

Now why do I call it the “sweat tea” swimming hole? Because of it’s sandy bottom, the clear water gets a light brown color to it when swimming. I’m pretty picky on what I’ll wade and swim in, but this lake passed my test. It’s clearer than Galveston, that’s for sure. While the water was a light bright brown color, you could easily see your feet in it. We were able to see lots of little fishies swimming around us at all times.

It even had a nice entry into the water area with area like steps to set your stuff and chairs out on…
We visited around 11 on a Wednesday and Thurday and we pretty much had the entire space to ourselves. Around lunchtime and a bit afterwards, a few other families shows up and there was still plenty of space. Our kiddos even made some new friends.

As you can see in the photo above, even with more people there, it’s still a great time. It’s also a lovely spot for picinics. I can’t recommend this place enough. Go check out Sam Houston State Park for yourself- OH! and stay at our little cabin while you’re out that direction.