Where wild horses roam

Tuesday October 11 2022 – Last night we stayed in the Cablaes parking lot, in Delaware. They have some dedicated spots and welcome Rv’ers to spend the night, by morning there was 1 semi, a motorhome, and truck camper in the lot with us. Before we went to bed Security had already driven by a couple of times.

We’ve managed to stay at least 1 night in all the New England states, and all the original 13 states, since we started traveling 5 years ago. News to me Maryland, where we are now, is not considered part of New England. In fact we have managed to stay in each state east of the Mississippi River except for the state containing the start of the Mississippi River which is Minnesota.

We’re staying in Assateague Island National Seashore, it’s an island where wild horses are allowed to roam free. Nobody is sure if the horses were left over from colonial times, or if they made it to the island after a shipwreck. Now days they are protected and taken care of and used as a tourist attraction.

While we’re here we’ll be staying 3 nights, we need to move to 3 different campsites as the park is pretty full and we couldn’t get any consecutive nights in the same spot.

I think the jelly fish are moon jellyfish, they were dead and washed up on shore.

Wednesday

The first full day on the island we drove around checking things out, including a wasted time and gas trip to the southern end of the Island, the round trip was about 70+ miles. From what I read they have 2 pony herds, the larger southern and small northern, that they are somehow kept separate. While we were at the southern end, all the ponies were fenced off from the main road with no signs, that they were roaming free like the northern herd.

They also had a loop drive around a pond or wetland area, I thought we might see something, but aside from a few birds you couldn’t see much, the grasses were taller than the van windows in lots of places and others were trees and brush on both sides of the road.

The island town of Chincoteague, that we had to drive through, to get into the park is nothing but a tourist trap town. We had to drive across a shallow bit of water to get to the island, and the left side of the road had billboards evenly spaced for the entire mile drive. I guess they were on the left to make it easier to read them and stay in your lane on the narrow road.

The lighthouse

Thursday

We waited until Thursday to explore the Atlantic side of the island, the only way to see or get to the ocean is to walk out some boardwalks over the dunes. It’s a good thing we went in the morning, because the predicted rain moved in and rained most of the afternoon.

The crab might be a ghost crab, I know, I could only see the crabs when they moved, and they were very fast. I guess they need to be to avoid being eaten by all the seagulls. The little sandpipers were so funny outrunning the incoming waved, their legs moving so fast they were just a blur to keep from getting wet.

In the summer the beaches on both the northern and southern ends of the islands are very popular, you have miles and miles of light cream colored fine sand.

The End