ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. (KRON) — This year’s Memorial Day weekend lands right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and California’s shelter-in-place order.
Local health orders in the Bay Area allow for general use of parks and trails maintaining them as essential to encourage physical activity.
Anyone planning on visiting a park in the East Bay this holiday weekend will find the East Bay Regional Parks District promoting social distancing by taking measures to limit unsafe overcrowding.
This includes closing some parking lots and staging areas, according to East Bay Regional Parks District spokesperson Dave Mason.
“We do have parking lots that are closed, mostly those are the ones that serve picnic areas and group activities,” Mason explains. “So of course with those not allowed, those parking area have been closed for that reason. However most of the park district’s acres remain accessible for exercise, walking, biking, riding horses. It is really about exercising, not socializing during this COVID-19 time.”
A popular Memorial Day destination is Roberts Regional Recreation Area in the Oakland Hills.
The parking lot there will be closed Memorial Day weekend but while walk-in access and bike trails will remain accessible.
A few miles away, the parking lot at Hayward Regional Shoreline Park is open.
The vast majority of East Bay Regional Parks will be open to the public.
What will not be open are visitor centers, water fountains, picnic areas, swimming facilities, boat ramps, playgrounds, group and backcountry campsites, kiosks, and reservable facilities.
Those services will remain closed until further notice during the pandemic.
Mason says it will be all hands on deck to help enforce these restrictions including putting up their eye in the sky.
“Like always this time of year we always have our helicopter actively doing what it does monitoring parks, being on call for police. We have a lot of rangers and maximum staffing in our parks so we want people to do their best and do the right thing,” Mason said.
If you want to learn more about what is closed at East Bay Regional Parks District, click here.
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