North Beach, Lake Charles, Louisiana

White sand one of city’s many outdoors offerings

by Cheré Coen | July 15, 2010

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Lake Charles owns its name because, well, it’s surrounded by a lake! And quite a large one at that.

That would be awesome enough for the residents with its cooling breezes, pirateer history and fabulous sunsets, but there’s also a sand beach lining one side of the lake, which comes in handy on those long hot summers.

In fact, North Beach is the only white sand beach that’s inland from Texas all the way to Florida, a stretch of fun that will make you think you’re on the Gulf of Mexico. The beach is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily yearround, with admission of $1 per car in the summer months.

The beach is located directly off Interstate 10 on North Lakeshore Drive in Lake Charles, at Exit 29 for eastbound travelers and Exit 30A for westbound travelers. For more information, call (337) 491-1280.

South of Lake Charles — and we mean both the city and the lake — there’s another outdoors arena to consider. The newly expanded and redesigned Prien Lake Park is a 29-acre park overlooking Indian Bay on Prien Lake that includes a Harbor’s Edge multi-use pavilion, amphitheatre, picnic pavilions, elevated boardwalk, walking paths, playgrounds, SprayGround water park and more. During the fall there’s free movies under the stars, and all year long there is canoe and boat launches, plus opportunities to fish.

Prien Lake’s just a tip of the Calcasieu Parish Parks & Recreation offerings. The parish (our version of countries) also offers campgrounds, numerous boat launching facilities, great places to fish (don’t let the name Alligator Park scare you off), rental pavilions and a Junior Golf program for kids at four participating golf courses.