40 Mile Park to open June 1

By Justin Seward

Commentator/Courier

The tentative tag has been removed from 40 Mile Park’s opening status as its board decided last week to officially open to seasonal campers on June 1.
“We’re just going to do like we were planning with June 1,” said Craig Widmer, park committee chair.
“We’re talking about opening it up for overnight camping starting June 19 and that’s tentative. We’re just going let them know that ‘OK if everything is still going good by the 19th, we’ll be able to do some overnight camping.’ It won’t be full out.”
Widmer says overnight camping will only be on spots that have enough space.
There will be empty spots between trailers as well.
The park had 90 seasonal lots and they are sold out for the season.
“There’s a waiting list, so we’ve used 50 per cent. We have lots of lots left but we can’t use them until the province lifts some of their stand,” said Widmer.
“As they do, we’ll start bringing more people in on the bigger lots. The ones that have more space.”
Other COVID-19 safety measures put in place are the washrooms, mini- golf , playground and swimming will be closed until mores restrictions lift.
“Pretty much everything (restriction) is going to stay until maybe July. Then we can open up the playground maybe a certain amount, open up the swimming area. It just depends on the province,” he said.
“We’re in the process of putting a bunch of signs up about social distancing and we talked about how we’re going to enforce stuff. You kind of have to tell them what’s what.”
The store will open if the park sees more people coming in, while the boat launch will be open for boaters.
The campsite hosts will be wiping down the potable water and sanitary dump sites and sand hand sanitizer will be available at those areas as well as by the store.
Ice and firewood will be sold too.
The annual Canada Day fireworks show on the water and the fishing derby were also cancelled for 2020.

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