Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge - Will we see the wild ponies?

 After our rainy day at Virginia Beach, we were ready for a blue-sky beach day--and we got one! We pulled out of our boondocking spot overlooking the river, and headed straight north on highway 13 to our next destination for the day--Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.

Actually, we made a stop on the way at the little grocery store in Oak Hall. We left the motor home parked here, while we drove the pickup the 15 miles to the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge. The main wildlife that people come to see are the wild ponies, and we sure hoped that we would get to see some of them today. There is a difference of opinion of where these horses originated. Some think they swam ashore from a Spanish ship wreck, while others think the island was a 17th century corral, and the horses were abandoned by their original owner. Either way, wild ponies have been living on this narrow 37-mile-long island for hundreds of years. We decided that our plan of attack to see the ponies today was to use our bicycles to tour the park.

We started on the Woodland Trail, where the trees are tall and beautiful.

We had been warned at the visitor center that the bugs would be bad in the forest, and they were right. So we sprayed down with bug spray and continued on our quest to find wild horses.

We stopped in at Tom's Cove for our first view of the bay. No horses here, and the bugs convinced us to get back on our bikes.

We stopped in at the viewing spot where wild ponies are often seen. Even though these horses are wild, they are still fenced into certain parts of the refuge. That makes them a little less "wild" to us. Because other people at the viewpoint pointed it out to us, we saw our first Chincoteague stallion. He's just a dot in the picture below, far behind the fence. Does that really count?

The main road of the park is the Wildlife Loop, a paved 3.2-mile road that circles a sizable lake. The road is closed to vehicular traffic until noon. So that means that we could ride our bikes here without dodging cars.

Half-way around the loop is a bike spur trail that leads towards the ocean. We parked our bikes with about 30 other bikers, thinking that the beach was going to be crowded.

It was not! In just a short walk from the entrance, we had a long stretch of white sand all to ourselves! We have wandered into another of God's wonders!

Denisa was glad to see shells on the beach, and she set about doing what she always does in these circumstances. She picks up some of her favorite shells, and then uses them to spell something in the sand.

Today's word is "Chinco" because let's face it--Chincoteague is too darn long to spell with shells.

While Denisa is playing with shells, Mark is off chasing ghost crabs before they can scamper away into their holes.

He photographed them in all their different poses. This is the "I'll flatten myself as low as possible so maybe he won't see me" pose.

Then there's the "I'll prance on my tippy-toes and flash my large right pincher to scare him away" pose.

But Mark's favorite picture was a ghost crab in the foreground, with Denisa hunting for shells in the background.

While Denisa was using only the bigger shells, we saw thousands of these tiny colorful shells with each incoming wave.

Back on our bicycles, we finished the loop and took some pictures of the birds hanging out in the fresh water lake of the refuge. So far our only good wildlife sighting are of crabs and birds--not wild ponies.

We had read that the gravel service road off the paved loop was also open to bicycles. So we decided to make the additional 5-mile ride to this less-visited part of the refuge. It's getting warmer now, and it's tough to pedal through this gravel surface. Denisa wasn't sure that this detour was a good idea.

But it allowed us to go even further up the coastline, where only the more adventurous park visitors roam.

More deserted beach with not a single person in sight. We have been blessed with blue sky and beautifully cool temperatures here on the coast! But will we see the wild ponies?

Wow! We are so lucky to have so much beautiful beach all to ourselves. We have surely wandered into another of God's wonders!

We'd ridden 11.4 miles by the time we finished our circle back to the pickup. Then we finished exploring the refuge in the pickup. That would include stopping in at the only beach that visitors can drive to. After spending time at our pristine bike-in beaches, we didn't stay long here with the crowds.

We also made a quick hike up to Assateague Lighthouse. Denisa is a sucker for a lighthouse, and this was a nice one.

As we made the drive towards the exit, we saw a traffic jam on the road ahead. That could only mean one thing--wild ponies!

We got into the middle of the traffic jam and found a parking spot beside the fence so we could take pictures. It almost seems like cheating to "find" wild ponies that are fenced in. But we were glad that they chose to graze close to the fence to give the visitors a photo opportunity. These horses are managed by the Volunteer Fire Department of the town of Chincoteague, Virginia. They know that the grass here will only support around 150 horses. So each July (since 1923) they have a round-up, where the wild horses will swim across a narrow channel from this island into the town of Chincoteague. Thousands of people will be lined up to watch the "pony swim." The wild ponies are checked over by a veterinarian, and the colts will be auctioned off in the fire department's main fundraiser of the year.

Now that we have finally seen the wild ponies, we can leave the island and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. After we went over the bridge, we made a couple stops in the town of Chincoteague. This little town is situated on an island between the larger barrier island (where the wildlife refuge is) and the mainland. Our first stop was at the statue of "Misty of Chincoteague." Marguerite Henry wrote a children's book in 1946 about the colt her family bought at the Chincoteague auction. Denisa remembers reading this book as a child. At the time she never knew that she would some day visit this island and see those wild ponies!

Our last stop in the town of Chincoteague was at the beach chairs spelling out LOVE.

We're feeling the love as we make our last stop in Virginia today. It was a great last stop at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge--where we did see the wild ponies!

Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnels into Delmarva

 After our soggy 24-hour stay in Virginia Beach, we are heading off the mainland of Virginia across one of the "seven engineering wonders of the modern world." Today's drive will take us across the 17.6-mile expanse of the waters of Chesapeake Bay. Several days ago we purchased an EZ pass, because that will save us a few dollars on the toll today. Because the motor home with the pickup attached is a 4-axel, 10-wheel vehicle, our ride will cost $34. Actually, because it will also use a couple gallons of the $5.99 diesel we just filled up with in Virginia, it will be even more expensive.

We had wished for blue skies for this drive out to sea, but instead we got continued rain showers. We're just glad that we don't have wind, because they will close down the bridge to tall vehicles like ours on windy days. This section of the bridge is four-lanes, so the vehicles going the opposite direction have their own bridge that runs parallel with ours. It is raining, we are driving over the deep water of the Chesapeake Bay--and now the sign tells us that there is road work ahead?!?

Sure enough, there are cranes and orange cones, as we are narrowed to two lanes, with on-coming traffic--in the rain.

That construction is working on another parallel tunnel. This 17-mile trip isn't just on a bridge, it also includes two tunnels. Presently, the tunnels have two-way traffic. With the completion of another tunnel, drivers won't have to meet cars coming towards them inside the long tunnels. The good news is that we are out of the rain while we are inside the tunnel under the water of Chesapeake Bay. Because we are driving under the water, the ships going up the bay above us have an uninterrupted shipping channel.

We are about half-way across this ride now, with another section of four-lane bridge going over the deepest part of Chesapeake Bay.

The narrowest section of this experience is when the four lanes come down to two, and the tall walls lead you down-hill into a second tunnel with vehicles coming toward you. There isn't much room for error when you are a wide motor home.

Some of those oncoming vehicles can be quite large. You just try not to think about the fact that you are under a very large body of water going 50 miles per hour in close confines with lots of other cars. If anyone makes a mistake in this 17-mile journey, it's not going to be pretty for any of us.

We both gave a little sigh of relief when we finished our bridge/tunnel crossing and found ourselves back on solid ground. That solid ground where we just arrived is actually a peninsula that is called "Delmarva." That's because it is made up of the entire state of "DEL"aware, the eastern shores of "MAR"yland, and the little point of "VA" (Virginia). We didn't even know that this little point of Virginia across the bay existed. So we didn't cross a state line on that long bridge/tunnel crossing, because we are still in Virginia. Our destination for the day will take us up Route 13, to our first Boondockers Welcome camp site. We were glad that our host, Hal, saw us coming. He led us down the very narrow roads to the slice of his farm land that he shares with boondockers like us.

This is our first stay using our Boondocker's Welcome membership. By joining for $67 we were given access to a map of people like Hal that open up their property to RVers with self-contained vehicles. Hal and his family have often camped here overlooking the Machipongo River, so he added 50-amp hook-ups. He decided he should share it with the rest of the world, and we are glad he did. For $15 per night, we have 50-amp electricity and this view of the wetlands. We took this picture from our camp site when we first arrived. We are close enough to the ocean that the height of the river is determined by the tidal flow. We are at low tide now, so the water is quite far from us, and we can see islands covered with marsh grass.

We tried taking pictures from the same place to illustrate the changing tides. Now as the tide gets higher, we see fewer pronounced islands, and the area closer to us has some shallow water in it.

At high tide we have water all the way up to the berm that protects the camping spots, and all of the islands are covered. It was fun to see another of God's wonders as we witnessed the affects of the ocean on this inland river.

It was also fun to do some bird-watching from the passenger seat inside the motor home. 

The shore birds were using the fence posts to roost, as they were lined up in front of us.

Besides getting a nice local camp site, it's also fun to get to visit with the local owner. Ken is a wheat farmer, forced to take the day off from harvest because of the rain. He is getting 80 bushels to the acre in his wheat harvest this summer, and the price of wheat is the highest he has ever seen. He retired from his real job, and returned home to take over his parents' farm several years ago, even though he never planned to be a farmer.

We also had a nice patch of corn near our camping spot, so Ken's farm is diversified.

Since Ken is a local farmer, we were hoping that he could tell us what was going on in the fields that we had seen in our drive today. We couldn't see anything growing, and it looked like the entire field was covered with aluminum foil.

Ken explained that these are tomato fields. In preparation for setting the tomato plants, the farmer makes deep furrows that create perfect up-raised rows of dirt. Each row of soil is treated with a special insecticide and then the silver covering is placed over it. A bus-load of farm workers will then arrive to plant tomato plants through the foil. It will take another bus-load of helpers to start harvesting those tomatoes later in the summer.

We visited with the two other RVers that were also camping at Ken's. We would have been perfectly happy to stay there watching the tides and the birds. But we decided to drive a little and see some more of this little bit of Virginia. We found that the first 70 miles of this Delmarva peninsula is called the Eastern Shores of Virginia. As we wandered the back roads, we found a bridge that took us over the Machipongo River.

Crossing that bridge put us on the ocean-side of this Virginia peninsula. We drove to the marina in the little town of Quinby. The tide was so high that it was only an inch below the pier going out into the bay.

This little-town marina doesn't host big yachts and pleasure boats. These are working boats owned by working fishermen.

We are coming to understand that crabs are the preferred catch of the day. We found tall stacks of crab cages beside the water at the marina.

Denisa was also excited to find garden markets beside the road while we were wandering. Locals with too many fruits or vegetables will display them on a table beside the road. Anyone is welcome to stop and buy at this self-serve stand. Cash payments are deposited through a little slot on a lock box that is usually bolted to the table. 

We stopped at two different vegetable stands, and Denisa had a nice collection of fresh fruit and vegetables. It's been a good day!

Since we are facing east, Denisa was up early the next morning to get a sunrise picture over the water in front of the motor home. From driving across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel to getting our first taste of the produce--it's been a good and eventful first day in Delmarva!