Day 5 - Chincoteague

Saturday, June 18,2016
We were up very early this morning so we could be on the road by 7:30 as we were heading to Chincoteague which was about 2 1/2 hours away and we wanted to have lots of time there.

Our first adventure was part of the drive -- the 23 miles of bridges, tunnels, and made made islands that took us across the Chesapeake Bay.  What an amazing engineering feat.  It was built in 1964 and in 2000 was recognized by Structural Engineer magazine as one of the "Seven Structural Wonders of America for the 20th Century". It consists of 12 miles of trestled roadway, two mile long tunnels under the water, two bridges, and 4 man made islands along with 2 miles of causeway.  The man made islands are each about the size of  Yankee Stadium and made up of thousands of 15 ton boulders dropped around the rim to then contain over 2 million tons of sand and rock.  It is hard to even fathom how this all was conceived and then achieved.  And the amazing part is NO government money was used to create it.

Once we arrived at Chincoteague, we drove through town to the National Wildlife Refuge where we spent a bit of time in the Visitor's Center.  Then we headed out across the causeway toward the Assateague Island National Seashore and it's Visitor Center.  In between, we stopped along the roadway along with many others and just oohed and ahhed over the many wild ponies gathered in one spot. This was what we'd come to see!!!! Noelle loves horses and is a fan of the book Misty.

While our eyes could see the horses and binoculars made seeing them even better, when we took this picture of Noelle with her frog and the horses in the background they more of less "disappeared" because of how far away they were at least to the camera.  But indeed they are there just on the other side of the small pond.

We took the time to walk the Woodland Trail to the lookout point with the hope of seeing the horses from a better vantage point but alas the trees blocked our view.  While it was a pretty walk, Noelle couldn't wait to get back to the car cause there were some bugs and SHE HATES BUGS!!!

This map gives an idea of what the area layout is like for these two islands

Hundreds of people were searching for parking spots and heading to the huge long beach on the ocean at Assateague but we did manage to find a spot so we could enjoy the visitor center and the hands on stuff including bones of wildlife and a touch tank where Noelle was able to hold several different types of sea wildlife like this whelp with its foot sticking out of the shell.

We then went back to the edge of town where we stopped at the Chincoteague Museum

- where Noelle spent quite some time searching for all the items on a printed sheet designed of course to get everyone to look at all the place had to show off. (prizes are awarded monthly to winners of a drawing of all completed quizzes, so she put her entry in the jar)

 The original reason for stopping was to see the "real" Misty from the story who was stuffed after she died.

The docent at the museum suggested we have lunch at the local Crab Shack, so once we were done at the museum that is where we went.  Noelle LOVED her lunch - crab in the shell.  I took a picture of her with the plate but not sure what happened to it.

From there we headed for a boat trip that promised to get us as close to the horses as possible.  For two hours we enjoyed time on the water in a pontoon boat with just our driver/guide and five people on a positively gorgeous blue sky day.  How could it get any better?

Well, it did because Noelle had a seat to herself

and we were able to see two different groups of the hoses on Assateague.

Noelle could ask all the questions she wanted to ask and the guide was willing to just let us sit and watch the horses as long as we wanted - no rushing.

We were able to see a variety of birds and learn a bit about them as well, again sitting and just watching them for periods of time.

We also got this close up view of a oyster and crab "farm" that a local man maintains.

 We returned in the late afternoon and then took off for the well known Island Creamery which offers a good variety of homemade ice cream.  We definitely enjoyed that treat before climbing in the car for the long ride back to the campground.

Again this evening there were rock bands playing till 11:00 pm so getting settled was a bit tough, especially once our next door neighbors returned with a huge gang of people who sat and talked till the wee hours.