camping awards

Waterfront resort outside Houston named best large campground in Texas

Lagoon Ranch Luxury RV and Cabin Resort is the best large campground in Texas for 2026.

Photo courtesy of Lagoon Ranch Luxury RV and Cabin Resort

Let's TACO 'bout it: The Texas Association of Campground Owners has awarded Lagoon Ranch Luxury RV and Cabin Resort in Onalaska a new title as the best large campground statewide for 2026.

The 54-year-old trade association currently represents over 430 Texas campgrounds, RV parks, and resorts. In 2024, the organization launched its annual TACO Awards to "recognize the hard work of campground owners" throughout the Lone Star State.

Awards are presented in three categories: Small Park of the Year (under 125 sites), Large Park of the Year (125-plus sites), and Glamping Resort of the Year. The 2026 winners were announced at the TACO Annual Spring Meeting and Trade Show on April 21.

Lagoon Ranch is a fairly new campground that opened in April 2025 just an hour outside Houston, and boasts a 1,000-foot shoreline along Lake Livingston. There are 24 custom cabins and 194 RV sites for visitors to camp at the resort, and entertainment opportunities span a basketball and pickleball area, a fitness center, a dog park, and an on-site Texas barbecue restaurant called Pit Row Pit Stop on the Lake.

The resort's most impressive amenity is a 180,000-gallon lagoon-style pool, complete with a swim-up bar, hot tub, spacious lounge areas, and a kid-friendly splash-and-play area.

Lagoon Ranch is an oasis for those who love spending time on the water.Photo courtesy of Lagoon Ranch Luxury RV and Cabin Resort

TACO's Small Park of the Year, River's Edge Campground in Johnson City, is a more distant destination from Houston. The resort is about an hour outside Austin, and about three-and-a-half hours from Houston.

River's Edge is a 100-acre park that offers 57 different sites for campers to enjoy the scenic Hill Country and the Pedernales River. Solo campers, families, and large groups alike can take their pick between tent sites, covered wagons, fully-furnished cabins, and more.

Being in nature is one of the biggest perks of doing a camping trip, and River's Edge encourages visitors to explore the park's two-mile hike and bike trail or go swimming or fishing in the river. The park also provides a nine-hole disc golf course, multiple sport courts for sand volleyball, basketball, pickleball, and cornhole, and a large playground for children.

Texas' best glamping resort
Camp Quitcherbichin (you read that right) in Lake Bridgeport, a camping and RV resort located 90 miles northwest of Dallas, was named the Glamping Resort of the Year.

In addition to RV sites, Airstream trailers, and fully-furnished cabins, resort also has 10 futuristic "Area 51" vessels that look like they came straight out of a sci-fi comic — think space station pods with floor-to-ceiling windows, electronic skylights, modern finishes, and luxe amenities like smart mirrors and heated floors.

Camp Quitcherbichin in Lake Bridgeport "Area 51" vessel The "Area 51" vessels are futuristic tiny homes.Photo by Jeff Crider Photography

Water-based activities are the main entertainment at Camp QYB with pontoon boat, kayak, paddle board, and pedal boat rentals for guests to take advantage of the property's one-mile stretch of waterfront lake access. Night fishers will appreciate the resort's guided night bow fishing tours, and animal lovers can visit the on-site petting zoo to spend time with miniature donkeys, horses, goats, pigs, and a turkey.

Weekends are often packed full of organized activities like scavenger hunts and foam parties for kids, or poker and music bingo nights for adults.

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HISTORY CORRECTED

Houston documentary maker helps correct biased Texas historical marker

Photo by Virginia Diaz-Laughlin

Medrano stands in front of the Karankawa marker while filming 'Truly Texas Mexican.'

It's not often that a film has an impact past the box office, but one documentary has helped tell the truth about the Texas Gulf Coast's long-disparaged Karankawa people.

For years, the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas have fought for a corrected Texas Historical Commission marker in Corpus Christi. Houstonian Adán Medrano’s 2021 film, Truly Texas Mexican, helped finalize a push that will lead to a long-due correction on July 25.

The old marker was plainly offensive. Not only did it say the Karankawa people had "gained a reputation for savagery," but it repeated the long-discredited claim that they practiced cannibalism — a contention born out of the colonial need to justify violence against the tribe.

Medrano, a San Antonio native who currently lives in Houston, became part of the fight when he stood in front of the marker and made a direct appeal to correct the sign.

"I call upon the historians who live in Texas to come up and stand up and say, 'Take this down. This is a lie,'" he said during a scene in Truly Texas Mexican.

Two of them heard the call. Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi history professor Dr. Peter Moore and historian Dr. Tim Seiter of the University of Texas at Tyler joined the years-long Indigenous effort following the film's release. Led by the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas, the academics helped research and draft a replacement that honors them as one of Texas' first peoples.

The marker not only replaces racist mythmaking with scholarship and tribal knowledge, it presents the fact that Karankawa descendants aren't a historical footnote but a living community still present in South Texas today.

Medrano's advocacy here continues his work with the T exas Indigenous Food Project, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the Indigenous foodways of Texas and the Americas. But in many ways it is a continuation of a career devoted to amplifying voices rarely heard in popular culture. In 1976, he founded San Antonio's CineFestival, now the nation's longest-running Latine film festival.

At 10 am on July 25, representatives of the Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend and the Karankawa Tribe of Texas will unveil the corrected marker, joined by Medrano. Visitors can find it at 6001 Ennis Joslin Rd.

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