Thursday we drove to Assateague Island, just south of Ocean City. Assateague is a barrier island that stretches from around Ocean City to way down in Virginia. Part of the Virginia end of the island is called Chincoteague, famous for the wild ponies, but the whole island has a population of horses. We spent quite a bit of time walking the beautiful beach.

We loved these little birds with the gull - they're called "peeps." They run down into the outgoing waves and peck at the wet sand for little bugs or something, then turn and run when the waves come back in. Their little legs move so fast that they're just a blur. I got a brief movie of them - maybe someday I'll figure out how to post it!


The rest of the island is scrubby and marshy - no wonder the horses are small - there’s not much for them to eat or drink! Had a PB&J picnic lunch and then we drove around for quite awhile looking for horses - finally found a few in an area that used to be a ferry landing. They’re pretty placid and used to people - I would have loved to see them running along the beach like in the movies!

This building was at the ferry landing where we saw the ponies - just thought it was cool.

On the way back from Assateague we spent some time in the quaint old town of Berlin - that’s BERlin, not BerLIN. It’s the town that “Runaway Bride” was filmed in. Hit several antique stores and found a few good mementos of our vacation. Ended the afternoon with ice cream made locally - it was delicious!

Today we hit the road again - drove south to the Chesapeake Bridge-Tunnel. It was amazing - 27 miles long, most of it bridge but with two mile-long tunnel sections to allow for the ship traffic above.

Kept driving into North Carolina and the Outer Banks - we are camped in a really nice spot on Roanoke Island. Tomorrow we will check out the Lost Colony and the Wright Brothers and drive as far south on the Outer Banks as we have time for. Here we are camped tonight on a little lake at a campground called The Refuge.

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