Lake Sees Nearly 3,500 Visitors on Easter Weekend

Colorful pop-ups stacked almost one atop the other, RVs in tight, Tetris-like formations and the smell of smoke and bar-b-que set the scene of an overcast and rainy weekend out at Lake Nasworthy, where families, groups of friends and out-of-towners mingled in their loose T-shirts and cut-offs.

The long weekend, which technically began on Good Friday, got to a slow start as San Angelo students made up a snow day, shuttered in their classrooms instead of enjoying a fully-free Easter weekend.

The extra school day didn’t keep the masses at bay, however. Traffic into the two parks picked up Friday night and Saturday morning, ending with some 3,445 visitors over the three-day span.

The majority of those visits were local, explained COSA Parks and Rec Business Analyst Don Maynard. Between Friday and Sunday, 1,907 resident day passes were sold, while an additional 452 non-resident day passes were purchased. Locals also bought the majority of the camping passes issued at 466, while 371 were sold to non-residents There were also 249 annual passes sold at $20 a pop.

The total in weekend sales came out to $20,661 for the two parks alone, while nearby convenience stores, eateries and bait shops saw a constant flow of traffic.

“It was crowded, it was busy,” Sergeant Barry Wike of the SAPD’s Lake Division said on Sunday. “[There were] rushes here and there of traffic coming in…they seem to be happy for getting rained out for a large portion of [Saturday].”

Wike said he spoke to several people over the weekend who had left and gone into town during the downpour and returned later, when the skies closed up.

“People just went indoors or went in the tents or RVs and waited it out,” Wike said. “They came out to a soupy mess for the most part…it wasn’t enough rain to make things real bad.”

In order to ensure that the weekend went off without incident, officers were out in full force Friday through Sunday, many pulling overtime hours to keep the regularly-scheduled lake officers and at least nine additional officers patrolling the parks and beaches at any given time. The entire Lake Division was also out in full force, providing assistance to those pulled in from city patrol and other divisions.

In total, Sergeant Wike reported that there were 126 additional man-hours planned for Friday and Saturday, plus 58 more for Sunday, however weather reduced the demand.

John Bouligny, a lake division patrol officer, said on normal days he generally puts around 200 miles on his truck as he makes his rounds around the winding roads along Lake Nasworthy and circles a large portion of Twin Buttes. Holidays usually cut the mileage in half, he said, due to frequent stops to talk to campers, and on a slow Friday he logged 149 miles.

Bouligny explained that the majority of the contacts he makes out at the lake deal with compliance issues, such as enforcing the no glass bottle rule and ensuring there aren’t any open fires lit in the parks. Because the two camping locations are owned by the city, an ordinance dictates that all state traffic laws apply, so seatbelt laws and speed limits are enforced as well.

“For the most part, people followed rules,” Wike said. “A lot of people said, ‘well, we didn’t know that was a rule,’ but they were handed the rules when they got here…Our big things were…ground fires and loud music…the usual stuff.”

Over the weekend, there were a few fights, a minor boating accident and a night-time water rescue on Friday when two jet skiers got stranded on different parts of the lake, both having apparently simultaneously run out of gas.

The call came in at around 9 p.m. Friday night when the sun had fallen and a biting wind blew across the lake, dropping the temperature several degrees.

Armed with flashlights and an approximate location, lake patrol officer David Berrie and Sector 2 patrol officer Chris Harrington started up the police boat and slowly cruised across the water in the glow of the moonlight, beaming their handheld torches at the shore.

Smoke from the boat’s engine rolled over the water in a near fog, clouding visibility as shallow crests of wind-blown wave-ettes lapped the side of the boat.

It took the officers nearly 10 minutes to find the first jet skier, stuck on a pile of rocks on the shore directly in front of the Stripes convenience store. After towing him a good five yards to the nearby dock, the officers set out to locate his companion, who had drifted quite a ways farther down near Rock Slough Park.

Not nearly as lucky as the first, this skier was situated in the middle of the lake just past a bank of reeds. He said he’d been out there since before sundown—at least an hour and a half by the time he was found—and as he frantically waved to the approaching boat, he thought about catching his shirt on fire as a signal. He didn’t have a lighter.

The man eagerly boarded the boat and was transported back to the dock with his jet ski in tow, his friend waiting and still wearing the life vest he’d had on when he was found. Neither of the two were injured out on the lake.

As of Sunday, the majority of the campers had packed up and left, while a few sparse tents remained on the grounds of Spring Creek and Middle Concho parks, with day pass revelers interspersed along the shoreline.

Mostly clean, only a few scattered remnants of Easter weekend lie in form of colorful debris on the campground Monday morning, accompanied by large, stuffed sacks piled around overflowing trash bins. Only a few campers and RVs remained, and a lone fisherman scooted along the water in a small boat, casting his line toward the shore.