I have a cabin up at Calling lake, and I can tell you this year, there is no beach at the mouth of the Rock Island lake. There is a bit of a beach at the end of Poplar street, but with the high water, it may be hard to social distance form each other. The best place for young families might be the community park just north of the bridge that crosses the Calling river about two km's north of the park entrance. Out houses, and kids play ground equipment, and a bit of a beach to boot.
As far as algae is concerned, it is fickle and changes by the hour. Remember there are many species of algae and each have their own preferred growing conditions, so that is why it changes from area, to area, and weather conditions. It typically dies over night and the water is clear in the morning, and then by noon it can be pea soup. Because Calling lake has so many acres of water under 15' is why it is a great fishery. A very strong food chain from the algae up to the biggest walleye around.
Calling lake is used as a "base control lake" by Alberta water watch council (they do water samples three-four times a summer) because it is pretty much untouched by human interference, especially when it comes to algae. There is no industrial run off, on Agricultural run off, very little residential impact, and all the inflow tributaries come from the same conditions. The old timers say they don't see any difference from 50-75 years ago for algae. Yes, some years are better or worse than others, but that is just like everything else in the natural world.
This is the highest I have seen Calling lake since 1997, and then it was a full 2' higher and south beach people had water around their cabins. We at north beach stayed dry, but barely.
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