In a recent FB post, “Visit St. Mary’s MD” listed seven beaches that are open to the public.
I did a quick estimate of how many miles of beach those seven sites translate into and came up with approximately 10 – 15 miles of beach open to the public. The following estimates were from each park’s website: Pt. Lookout – 2 miles, Newtown Neck – 7 miles*, Greenwell – 2 miles*, Snow Hill – 1500 ft., Myrtle Point – 2 miles*, St. Clements – ?, and Elms – 500 ft.. (*Note that Newtown’s, Greenwell’s and Myrtle Point’s estimates are referred to as “waterfront” or ” shoreline” but their actual beach areas are much less than that.)
Not listed on the Visit St. Mary’s listing were several other County waterfront parks and areas such as boat launches (e.g. Piney Point and St. Inigoes Landings.)
But the overall bottom line is that even though the County does have over 500 miles of waterfront, the public’s overall access to a beach comes up a little slack. Most beach access in the County is fee-for-service and is available on a first-come-first served basis. Hence, on any given summer weekend, particularly the holiday ones, access to these beach areas closes early because they fill to capacity.
Life is better on a beach; but you better arrive early to take advantage of it here in the County. (Little tip – go during the week when all the day trippers and tourists aren’t here. Better yet, latch onto someone with NAS access and go to one of the best beaches in the County – Cedar Point Beach.)
And since I mentioned it, here are the Beatles modifying the Temps’ “My Girl’ riff into their tune that may or may not have been about taking LSD.
N.B. – There are never any capacity problems at Buzzy’s Country Store, unless of course we are talking about how much alcohol you can consume!