31 Years Later, Riverhead Couple Still Running County Park Store

For 31 years, Joe and Mary Ann Kaelin, Riverhead residents, have spent summers at Cedar Point County Park in East Hampton, but not just as campers. 

The Kaelins run the Cedar Point General Store, where campers can find practically anything they need during their stay, and where residents of the Northwest Woods go for their morning coffee and paper. 

From the weekend before Memorial Day until school lets out, the store is open weekends only. Come June 20, the store will be open seven days a week until Labor Day. They usually stay open weekends in September.

Joe — whose family has lived in Riverhead for 200 years — mans the grill most of the time, cooking up breakfast, lunch and dinner orders, while Mary Ann offers mini math lessons to kids looking to make change for the arcade games that still only cost a quarter. 

For the Kaelins,  the store is not just their business, but a way of life. They live in their motor home that is parked outside the store. After hours, they socialize with fellow campers or go have dinner with customers who live in the area and have become friends. 

"This isn't work. This is like a social event for us," Joe said, sitting in the dining room section of the store on a slow Sunday afternoon. "We've been dealing with the same people over and over again. We've seen generations come to the store. These people are like family." 

It all began in the mid-1970s, when a friend of theirs who had hot dog stands was looking for someone to run the stand at Dolphin Beach in Quogue. "I figured I take two kids to the beach every day, I could do it," Mary Ann said. She was working as a secretary at the Riverhead School District, but had summers off, and took on the summer job. "It just kept growing from there," she said. 

She and her husband, who worked for Coca-Cola, eventually took over stands at Ponquogue, Tiana, Cupsogue and other Dune Road beaches. Their sons Jimmy and Joseph worked with them.

Several years later, they found out that Tom Strong, who ran a small ice cream stand at Cedar Point with his son, was going to stop. Having traveled up and down the East Coast three times with their camper, they knew how well a campground store could do. 

Joe approached the county with a proposal to not only build a store, but to also offer Saturday night outdoor movies. The county built the store, to the Kaelins' specifications. The first lease was for 10 years with two five-year options to renew. 

They started small and then it "mushroomed," Mary Ann said. 

From tent stakes to propane, fuses, canned goods, bug spray and hammocks, "You name it we sell it," Joe said. "We have a range. Condoms to tampons," he said with a laugh. "If someone asked for it once, we got it."

"I have campers come in all the time and say they've never seen a store so well stocked," Mary Ann said. 

In 2000, when Joe retired as an executive from Coca-Cola, they also expanded the store to include the dining area, on a cliff that overlooks the bluffs and out at the Cedar Point Lighthouse. 

The store also loans out volleyballs and basketballs to use on the nearby courts. "We've never had a problem," he said. "No one has never not returned it." 

The Kaelins' most recent lease expires in nine years with renewal options available. 

Joe, 71, and Mary Ann, 72, have no plans of closing up shop anytime soon. "As long as our health allows," Joe said. He's has lived withchronic lymphocytic leukemia for 13 years, he said, but he's feeling well and looking forward to the summer ahead. 

"We have friends who can't understand why we still do this," Joe said. "It's our summer home."