WYPR: This Week on Chesapeake Summer...A Visit to Sandy Point (2008-08-15)

Sandy Point State Park, with its long stretches of bay-front beaches, picnic areas and marina, enjoys a reputation as the working man's park. In this edition of Chesapeake Summer, WYPR's Joel McCord finds out why.

If you don't have a boat, and 600 to 700 dollars-a-day for charter fishing is a bit steep for you, there's always the jetty at Sandy Point, within spitting distance, and earshot, of the westbound span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Not that the fishing's all that great, but as they say, a bad day fishing is better than a good day in the office.

"There ya' go. That's the way I look at it. It's relaxing, it gives you something to do and it's a beautiful day out, so, yup."

Ed Staub had driven to the park from Landsdowne in Eastern Baltimore County early last Saturday. He was one of about two dozen people perched on the rocks, most of them with long, fiberglass rods and bait boxes full of fancy lures. And then there was Walter Ratna, who tossed his line onto the water bare-handed and waited for that tell-tale tug. He said it's the way he learned to fish back in Costa Rica.

"I've been doing this for a long time, for all my life. I'm thirty two years old." He's been living in Northern Virginia for two-and-a-half years and fishing regularly at Sandy Point.

"I like this place because I use it for relax, see? A lot of people spend time, drink alcohol and drugs. I use this place, you know. More relaxing, yeah. I'm not thinking of nothing wrong."

On a tour of the park, assistant manager Jay Kenty says Ratna is indicative of the shifting demographics of the crowd.

"We used to draw primarily from Baltimore. Now, many, many of our patrons come from Prince Georges County, Montgomery County and Northern Virginia. And the vast majority of that population is Latino."

The 786-acre park, with its mile of waterfront, picnic areas and boat launches, remains a working class retreat, he said, it's just that it's drawing people from a different area.

"We are still, at least in my mind's eye, one of the very last, best deals coming from the Washington metro, Baltimore area."

The weekend admission price is five dollars for Maryland residents and six for non-residents. The park draws as many as 10-thousand visitors on a muggy summer Saturday. And that many people create a lot of trash. Some years ago, officials removed trash cans from all state parks; figuring visitors would take their trash with them. But Park Ranger Amelia Matos said it hasn't worked out that way.

"They come here for the day, they barbeque, they bring all their food and stuff with them, their kids dirty diapers, all that stuff; they don't take it home. They leave it. They leave it on the beach in bags."

Maintenance workers, she said, spend hours cleaning up every day. Apparently, they're doing a good job, because Torell Jones, who was making her first visit to the park in at least 30 years, was impressed.

"It's great, it's nice, it's clean. I heard some stories about it, but it's totally different from what I expected."

She and her mother, Terri Perales, brought the family from Baltimore to celebrate birthdays. Perales said it was a tradition.

"My mother, my uncle, my family, father, they've been bringing us to Sandy Point for the last 30 years."

She said they like the beach and the scenery, especially the Bay Bridge in the background, and the price.

"We usually go down Ocean City for like three days, two nights every year. But due to the economy, you know, it's been pretty tight in the family and, you know, with the hotels being so expensive, you know, so we just decided to do our celebration at the beach."

That's the beach at Sandy Point, about two hours away from Ocean City on a good day, but a lot cheaper. I'm Joel McCord, reporting at Sandy Point State Park for 88.1, WYPR.