Chincoteage and Assateague Isand

During the middle of our spring break week, we made a little girls' trip up to Chincoteague Isand.  I really didn’t have a particular reason for picking it other than I saw something about it on a website, found a good hotel rate, and the dates worked, so we decided to go!  Mouse is always up for our adventures, so she came along with us.  After getting to the hotel and checking in, the girls wanted to go straight to the beach.  Assateague Isand was right next to our hotel, so that’s where we spent a lot of our time.  Most of the island is a nature preserve, but there are also beaches for people to play/swim at.  It wasn’t swimming weather, but Nina and Lyla always seem to have fun at the beach no matter what the weather is.  It’s never easy to get them to leave!

 

Once we did leave the beach, we explored a little bit of Assateague by car and got to see the wild horses.  I expected there to be herds of them, but from where people can access, we saw small groups of them.  I’ve since learned that we were lucky to see any at all.  I talked to people who have gone there hoping to see them and left not seeing any!

 

 

Since it was after 3pm by the time we got to another large nature preserve section of the island, we were able to drive our car around a road inside that section of the preserve.  From what we could tell it seemed to be an area for bird watchers.  I’m not sure what bird(s) they were looking for, but you could tell that was the draw of that particular section of Assateague.

  

 

After exploring Assateague for awhile, we went back to the hotel to get cleaned up for dinner.  The girls found this little turtle trying to get into our room, so they named it and kept it for a few hours.  One of the housekeeping staff said there are tons of those little turtles around, so with two girls it was kind of hard having just one turtle, so we (well, really Mousey) looked and looked for another turtle to no avail.  Thankfully before the night was over the little guy got returned back to his habitat.  I’m sure he was much happier there than in the empty trash can of the hotel room! 

  

We had dinner on Main Street in Chincoteague, then we went to the Island Creamery for ice cream.  I read that the Island Creamery was a “don’t miss” stop in Chincoteage, and it definitely did not disappoint.  Their homemade ice cream was delicious!  Nina had Marsh Mud (chocolate ice cream on steroids), Lyla had Cookie Dough, and Mouse and I shared the Bourbon Carmel Crunch.

  

For day two, we decided to rent bikes to explore more of Assateague.  That was definitely the way to go!  There were a lot more places you could go on bikes than with a car, and you could cover a lot more territory on bikes than you could on foot.  The first stop on our little island bike tour was the Assateague Lighthouse.  The lighthouse was owned by the Coast Guard until 2004 until it’s maintenance was transferred to the nature preserve, but its light is still actively used for navigation by the Coast Guard.  It’s 142 feet tall, and we climbed steps all the way to to the top of it.  Our selfie is from the railing at the top of the lighthouse.  It does make your stomach a little jumpy to be up that high in small space though!

  

We continued to explore on our bikes and took a little detour off the official trail to explore a little by the water.  We were hoping to see more horses over there, and while we saw evidence that they had been there (large poop piles), we didn’t see any, but we did see tons of small snails and some horseshoe crabs.

 

 Before biking off Assateague for the last time, we saw the group of horses again.  The ponies have been living on Assateague since the 1600’s, and it seems like they enjoy a pretty nice life on the nature preserve with lots of land to roam around.

So, we can check the box on Chincoteage and Assateague for relatively close adventure trips.  I think Mouse and I's favorite part was exploring the island by bike, and I think the girls’ favorite part was playing on the beach and feeding corn to to the two ponies at the bike rental place. It was nice to have that little get away to combine with the hiking and the zoo from earlier in the week.  Once we got home late Thursday night, it was nice to have Friday to relax a bit at home.  While I was teaching on Friday, Mark took the girls fishing.  According to him, they’ve become quite the little fisherwomen.   They caught fish on Friday then wanted to go back out on Saturday morning - they didn’t have to twist Mark’s arm!