Day 247

Yesterday, I mentioned I had a surprise reason for coming to Chincoteague that isn't just the beach. Today, we started off by going on a pontoon cruise of the waters between Chincoteague Island and Assateague Island. On Assateague Island live wild ponies. It's thought that the ponies arrived on the island due to a shipwreck of a Spanish boat. The ponies swam ashore and have generationally lived there since. Assateague Island is split by Virginia and Maryland. On the Virginia side, where the ponies are is protected and humans can't interact with them. However once a year (in a few days actually) The Saltwater Cowboys (the volunteer fire fighters) round up some of the ponies and auction them off to raise funds for the fire station. They have been doing this since the 1920s. On the Maryland side, they occupy a beach area that is open to humans. Once again, like the other beach, it's maintained by the state and doesn't have hotels along it because it's wetland. You will see photos from both sections of Assateague Island.

Starting with the boat tour...

These ponies are free to roam on several acres of land. The boat can only come so close to the shore. There were lots of them farther away from the shore line, but those photos aren't as clear. These two ponies were separate from the herd.

I forget what kind of birds these are, but they swim under the water to catch fish and sit up on these posts to dry their wings.

We got back on shore and changed into beach clothes, to head to the Maryland side. While on the way to the hotel, we stopped to let this duck family cross.

On the Maryland side, things are much different. These ponies were grazing on the sides of the road. They are very docile, but since they are wild animals, of course we didn't attempt to interact with them.

My two favorite travelers and the beautiful clean beach. Since there are no hotels, there is a lot less trash! Delightful!

This one was about two feet away from the car.

Day 246

Today we started a weekend vacation on Chincoteague Island in Virginia. It's on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. By a bird's eye view, it's only about an hour away. However, unless you have a helicopter or small plane, you aren't getting there that way. From Richmond, it's about 4 hours away. We had to travel down the coast to Virginia Beach (about 1.5 hrs) and up the island coast to Chincoteague, which is at the very end of the island section of the coast (about 2.5 hrs). Chincoteague has uninhabited beaches. What does this mean? It means that there are no hotels lining their beaches, unlike Virginia Beach. This is mostly due to it being wetlands/marshes which makes the land not suitable for building. This means that the public area is part of a nature preserve and you can't access all of it, but you can access a large portion, which is good enough for us. There is another reason why we chose Chincoteague for our destination. I'll save that surprise for tomorrow.

Marsh land on the way to the island. Marsh is on either side of the road for miles before we get to the bridge for the island.

There were red and orange flowers along the front of the hotel.

Panoramic of the waterway behind the hotel. There was a little balcony for our room, which had this beautiful view.

This is the sun glistening on the water by the bridge.

After dinner, we went to the beach to walk around.

This is a different variety of seagull than we normally see in Virginia Beach.

Birdy foot print

Waves

Sorry that the horizon isn't straight, but this is a good view of the waves crashing. I took a few sets, but this is my favorite.

The other side of the beach area is marsh. There are many kinds of wild life on the nature preserve. Birds are the most common. 

Crane

By the time we got back to the hotel, the sun was setting. We walked along the back boardwalk and watched it set. We also watched what a local called "The Parade of Ducks" and Alex calls "Duck School". It was a large group of ducks. There were two adults guiding the young ones off the board walk and into the water. Then, guiding the group around this isle of land into the main water.

Day 175

Today, we left Orlando, FL for Myrtle Beach, SC. This is a long drive, so I slept most of the time. While awake in the car, I took a few photos of the sky, which looked great with the bright sun.

The straight lines across the sky are from plane exhaust. The more vertical ones are natural.

Went we got to Myrtle Beach, we changed for dinner into something nicer than traveling clothes and headed for the beach. We walked along the beach to our dinner destination.

This bee was dead in the sand.

We found 3 dead jellyfish. This one looked the most like a jellyfish.

This broken conch shell was among the thousands of broken shells that were left in huge piles on the shore. I can only assume that the tide brings in huge amounts of shells nightly and leaves them there as it goes out.

Since we are on the east coast, the sun rises over the water and sets across the land...unless you are farther down in Florida on it's west coast. I took this photo through the window of the hall way to our room. We were on the 19th floor. I'm not sure why the glow of the sun created a large blurred circle and a small concise circle, but it's very neat to see. Also, if you look closely, you can see rays radiating from the sun

Day 170

Today, we started our 9 day vacation. We left at 4am. The first leg stretching stop was in SC at a rest stop with a welcome center.

For lunch, we went to Uncle Buba's in Savannah, GA. Then, we walked around Forsyth Park before embarking on the next part of our long drive for the day.

These small birds were eating from the grass along the street we parked on.

The sun was shining bright through the oak trees. Oak trees by the ocean are different than those by us. Salt water causes the tree branches to twist as they grow. They also have Spanish moss growing on them. This is common along the Southern coast.

This pet bunny was relaxing in the busy park. It was on a leash and wasn't nervous around the large amount of people at the chalk festival. Since it's a pet, it doesn't fit with my normal wild creatures. However, it was surprisingly very calm for a bunny in a busy park with lots of dogs.

We headed to Jacksonville, FL for the evening. After checking into our hotel at the Mayo Clinic (I kid you not), we headed for the near by beach.

Like most beaches, there were seagulls. I love the reflective qualities of the water on the sand.

John found this on the beach. John thinks it's a jelly fish. I thought it might be a boob implant.. I know, I'm the gorey one. Either way, it was neat looking. I wasn't allowed to poke it.

The receding water caused ripples in the sand. Darker sand was deposited in the valleys of the ripples. Because the wet sand was so reflective, the setting sun glowed brightly on it.

This is what the sand looks like as it absorbs the remaining receding water.

This is what the sand looks like from being walked on by many people. It's like small dunes.

While walking back to the car, I saw these tall pink flowers...

...and these cactus flowers.

We wanted to eat dinner at the beach. An irony of Jacksonville is all the bars that line the beach. Given that the Mayo Clinic (best known as an addiction rehab) is located in Jacksonville, FL, the large amount of bars must keep them in business with some locals too. Since, we couldn't find a suitable place at the beach to eat dinner with Alex, we went in search of somewhere else. On the way to find a suitable spot, I took a photo of the setting sun. We found Gumbo Yaya. It's a small place with wonderful New Orleans food. Very delicious and worth the search.