Accessible Beach on Lake Erie Welcomes All

Last weekend, out-of-town relatives were visiting and wanted to go to the beach while they were here. It’s always interesting for us to see our Presque Isle State Park in northwestern Pennsylvania through fresh eyes. We grew up with the lake and beaches and often take them for granted. The older we get, though, the luckier we feel to live here.

On Presque Isle (locals call it “the peninsula”), we have our favorite spots to visit and don’t usually rely on anything but our own experience to guide us. Because of a bit of research performed by the savvy visitor, though, we decided to try Beach 8 (Pettinato Beach).

Recently renovated, Beach 8 features plenty of parking close to the beach, new bath houses that are ADA-accessible, and a concession stand. The beach itself is accessible, too, with a cement path winding onto the sand, where it meets a roll-out mat that allows wheelchairs to roll all the way to the shore. In addition, there are a couple of all-terrain wheelchairs for the borrowing, situated next to a brand-new, West-Coast-like lifeguard station.

The morning we visited Beach 8 was cool, only around 72 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind coming off the lake gave us a chill, but the sun, rising in the sky behind us, provided warmth as well. The kids enjoyed splashing in the water and transporting buckets full of it to soak the sand near our blankets. My husband and I enjoyed sitting in our beach chairs watching the waves, the sailboats, our relatives, and all the other beach goers. There was only one instance of sand in a preschooler’s eye that was calmly handled by the capable parent, and plenty of grains later made it onto the bottom of the bath tub at home, reminding us of visits with our kids years ago. All in all, it was a good morning at Presque Isle.

It’s nice to see another accessible beach at Presque Isle, in addition to the one at Beach 7 (Waterworks Beach), which has a wooden boardwalk leading to an observation deck. Both beaches offer the sand-and-shore experience for all. Here are some more photos of Beach 8.

Note:

My only suggestion is that it would be really great if we’d all clean up after ourselves. We arrived in the morning, and there was quite a bit of litter waiting. We cleaned it up and made sure we didn’t leave anything behind at the end of our visit.