We live across the road from the trailhead for Christman Trail, one of the nicer trails in Beltzville State Park. In the last two days the park has been inundated with visitors; yesterday and today the Wild Creek Falls area was incredibly full of people, many of them wearing swim suits, although swimming is not allowed in the Wild Creek area. The Park, evidently, makes no attempt to enforce that policy. Since many people who spend hours swimming also need a restroom, and since none are available, I have a feeling that the e coli count must be fairly high at the upper end of Wild Creek Cove.
A number of Park visitors, seeing the parking lot at the Falls overwhelmed, parked at Christman Trail and walked to the Falls area, almost half a mile away. I guess I should be happy that quite a few of those visitors actually wore masks. Good for them. I am less pleased that some of those mask wearers ditched their masks in the parking lot before they left. I try to keep that parking area clean, and tonight I picked up plastic bottles, cans, masks, clothing, orange peels, and other assorted junk, including a plastic bag that I think may have contained dog poop. Nice of them to pick up after their dog, but not so nice to leave the bag in the parking lot. (I wrote “may” because I didn’t investigate.)
I like that people are getting outdoors and using the park. I just wish they weren’t such slobs and rule breakers.
Unfortunately we live in a "ME" world. People don't care about anyone else. I've done two videos on two state parks (Hickory Run & Lehigh Gorge) and In my description of the videos I always say to anyone that bothers to read them, "Be kind to the Park" I doubt if anyone bothers to take the time to read anything unless it's on social media and it's about them.
ReplyDeleteBeltzville is a nice park but sometimes I wish it was still the Big Creek of the old days when people respected the land. We had a lot of fun and we weren't slobs.
Some of us are thinking about signage that gets at this. It would not say "No swimming, no picnics," but rather, Welcome to the Park. This is a very sensitive environmental area, and as a steward of the park, you should do the following: and then list some behaviors. I believe that many urban residents have no idea how to treat the natural world. Maybe it's the teacher in me.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea. Accentuate the positive.
ReplyDelete