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.