Thursday, August 6, 2015

Selwyn Beach Conservation Area I-VI

The sun was shining, the was a nice breeze to keep the bugs away, for the most part and it was warm 74F (23.3C) making today was an ideal day to go over to the Selwyn Beach Conservation Area, located at 2251 Birch Island Road.

I arrived at the Park for 9:00am trying to beat most of the people who would come out to spend the day at the beach and for the most part I succeeded.

For many years from the time Christine was a year old child we would take her to the Beach most week days during the summer and do other things on the weekend when the beach was crowded.

Selwyn Beach IV

One of the things she liked was going along the trail from the parking lot through the shadowed tunnel created by the trees and coming out into the bright sunlit and running across the grass to the sandy beach.

We would take her on the hiking trails and eventually she walked the entire 3.1 miles (6km).

Selwyn Beach VI

The unsupervised beach is located on the northeast shore of Chemong Lake.

There is a marked off area that reaches a depth of 4.5' (1.37m) and the bottom is sand to that point. Once you go under the rope the bottom becomes a little bit on the weedy side.

But in all the years I have lived in this area the Beach has never been closed due to water quality.

Selwyn Beach V

The 72 acre (29.1 hectare) Park was purchased by the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority (ORCA) in 1973 to make sure that the public would have access to a section of the lake.















Selwyn Beach I

There are many small barbecues and picnic tables in the area around the beach area where families have the opportunity to spend the day and cook a meal in the great outdoors.

There is also a picnic shelter complete with a large barbecue for birthday parties, family reunions or other special occasions which can be reserved by contacting the head office.













Selwyn Beach II

Selwyn Beach also has a public boat launch and dock and years ago in the off season I would sometimes take Pagan and Fancy there to swim.

Pagan preferred to stay at the edge of the water and just get his feet wet; whereas Fancy loved the water and would race to the end of the dock and jump out as far as he could into the lake and would sometimes dive down for the water plants.












Selwyn Beach III

I will post these sketches at a later date once they have been completed and paintings have been started.

It was well worth paying the daily entry fee of $10 per vehicle.