Celebrating an Outstanding State Park Experience

Visitor Review:

This park deserves 6 Stars. My wife and I went to MacArthur Beach Park a year ago when the park was open but most facilities were closed for Covid. We walked most of the trail and a couple of miles up the beach. There was a sign that beach wheelchairs are not currently available. My 88 year old mother has been saying that she wants to go to the beach and it’s been years. We have taken her to a couple of parks where she can sit and see the water but beaches were impossible with her walker. Upon entering the park on this trip with my wife and my mother, I asked the ranger at the entrance booth if beach wheelchairs were available. The ranger said there is a tram that could take all of us to the other side of the boardwalk where we could get the beach wheelchair. Once we parked the tram drove up and asked if we were in the blue SUV and we confirmed we were. The entrance Ranger called ahead to let them know we were going with my mother. The driver told us to wait as he turned the tram around. We got in with my mother’s walker stored on the back of the tram. He was extremely friendly and wanted my mother to enjoy the ride across the water on the boardwalk. On the other side a different ranger was waiting for us with the beach wheelchair. My mother got into the really cool looking 3 wheel reclining wheelchair with balloon type tires. Sitting low to the ground with her feet in front of her, I started to push her up the ramp to the other side where you can see the ocean. There is a spot where the solid wood fence is lowered so you can view the ocean sitting in this lowrider wheelchair. Then we continued down the ramp to the beach. Pushing across the sand was easy. The balloon tires didn’t sink into the sand. We got to the edge of the high tide where the beach angles down steeply and parked the wheelchair there. The three of us spent the next 90 minutes looking at the ocean. It was a perfect Florida day. Cool (for Florida) bright blue sky without a cloud and small perfectly shaped waves rolling in. The beach had some people on it but they were all a little south of us so we had this area to ourselves. You could not ask for a more beautiful experience. When we started our drive that day we were planning to go to a different park where we could sit on a park bench and see the ocean but not get near it. My wife suggested we go to MacArthur Beach. A 20 minute longer drive but thought we could walk out a little ways on the boardwalk seeing the bay. . In the end it turned into a magical day for my mother and us. We felt like VIPs. Everyone seemed excited to help us make it a great outing. The helpfulness and friendliness was well above anything we could have expected. I regret not getting the names of everyone who helped us to give them a well deserved call out. I hope they see this and understand how much they made this an amazing experience to get my mother onto the beach which had been her desire for years.