Sandling Beach State Recreation Area — Attraction in Butner

Found this place a week ago today, and was pleasantly surprised. Great, large beach, very large, roped off swimming area, large clean bathrooms and changing area, lots of picnic tables and grills, playground area, plenty of trash and recycling bins (wish people would use them) and they even provide life vests for little ones(wish parents would replace them when finished) I enjoyed my first visit so much I decided to go back again yesterday and was appalled at what the beach looked like. Empty water bottles, broken beach toys, ie pails, all over the beach. The park is kind enough to provide life vests but the adults are not kind enough to return them to the peg area provided, instead just leaving them all along the beach. I got there early enough yesterday to know that this was all from the day before. I am guessing that the park is short of personnel to clean up after the lazy folks that come to enjoy the beach and swimming but are too lazy to clean up after themselves. I noticed they had a sign up for applications for jobs and even thought about volunteering to do it for free use of the beach and swimming but I live in Louisburg and the gas every day to and from would be too much for me...

I caught a flat coming in to sandling there. I saw the young guys who work around the parking area and I asked for help because I had a spare in the trunk, but for some reason, my tire wouldn’t come off like the rim was stuck so I wanna give a special shout out to Glenn and the guys that came and helped me they all gave it a good try and finally it gave in and popped off so we could put the spare or should I say so they can put the spare on I actually have a bad back and I’m new here to North Carolina all the way from Oakland, California, which talking to Officers Glenn I found out he live there for quite some time before he came to North Carolina. I want to say thank you to him and the guys they were very cool down to earth and professional which was new to me as far as law enforcement goes! Next time me and my wife come up I’ll bring some good to put on the grill for you guys!...

Perfect place to have a cookout and events. One small issue with the park is that they started turning away some of my Family members after we invited them to our cookout at the recreation area (the area where the cabins and the picnic areas are, NOT the swimming area.). This has completely ruined my father's birthday event, as most of the family were turned away. The staff could have directed them towards the picnic area where we were, so this was unexpected but unacceptable. One of my uncle's even said they had a worker near they entrance waving his arms to signal that they were at "max capacity". The area where we are at in this park only has between 4-6 cars. I was going to give this location a single star, but I shall give them three due to the memories I have...