Beltzville State Park opened this weekend, but not to nearly as much fanfare as usual while the threat of COVID-19 lingers.

Though visitors attended the park both days, numbers were down across the board, according to Alma Holmes, Beltzville park ranger.

“It was a low crowd for an opening day,” Holmes said. “We had a few more people here on Sunday, (but) Sundays are generally a busier day than Saturday.”

Holmes said the park was open to all visitors, which differed from Mauch Chunk Lake Park, which was only open to Carbon County residents.

“We were open to everybody, all our usual crowd,” she said. “We were open to everybody and everybody was here.”

Holmes said the park experienced “just normal issues, nothing out of the ordinary.”

On the whole, visitors practiced social distancing.

“Some people had masks on, some people didn’t,” she said. “For the most part when they were down on the park they seemed to be social distancing; they did come out in groups, (but) for the most part the people were well-behaved.”

Holmes briefly discussed other matters such as parking and picnic tables.

“We are at 50 percent on our parking; we will not be parking the overflow parking,” she said. “And we have reduced the number of picnic tables.”

Moving forward, Holmes said the main point she wanted to stress to visitors is that they need to practice social distancing, wear masks and be safe.

“We want people to realize the threat of COVID-19 is still out there, (so) they do want to make sure they are wearing masks when they come out to the park and social distancing,” she said.

“We do want people to enjoy themselves, but we do want them to be safe.”