Assateague Again!

It had been years since we went to Assateague and/or Chincoteague-- I think we stopped shortly after we moved to Charlottesville and realized it was just a lot farther away now, we hadn't bothered.  But Camille had seen the pictures from those camping trips and desperately wanted to see the horses.  She was really just a baby last we went, so I guess we can't fault her for not remembering.  So we told we could go again.

It was fun taking the truck camping, instead of the van for once!  Weird advantages to only having two kids, who knew?

We left on Monday afternoon, so we had our weekly chat with Bentley while we were on the road.  We took this picture to show him how much we were missing him:

The drive went really smoothly, but we'd gotten a later start than we wanted and had to stop a few times, so it was nearly dark by the time we arrived.  But we did catch this sunset as we were searching for our campsite and Camille was literally squealing with joy seeing all the ponies right away!  (I think she was worried that we would have bad luck and just not see any horses.  Nope, they're everywhere!!!)

Then we spotted this colt and the squealing went up an octave!

So that was a perfect introduction to the island!  Then we found our campsite and discovered that it was NOT the same place that I was picturing!  Apparently in the past we'd camped in the state park, which has really great bathrooms.  But this time we were in the national park, which has drop toilets and a couple outdoor, cold-water-only showers!  Not quite what I had in mind!!!

So that was a bummer.  It was also crazy windy, which meant I was struggling with the kids to set up our tents while Craig was struggling to build a fire.  We were kind of a mess.  Plus, we had to carry everything from our car, which was parked a little ways away.  One of those distances that doesn't seem far until you're carrying everything and walking in the sand.  And then it's a HUGE pain.

By the time we'd got everything set up and a cooked our dinner, it was so late.  And chilly!!!  We were not expecting to be cold in June!  But we huddled around our picnic table enjoying our foil dinners and the gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches we'd made (at least, the ones that didn't get burned).  And then!  Suddenly a bunch of horses marched through our campsite and began gathering around us, eyeing our dinners!!!  Now-- these are ponies.  They aren't very big.  But they're still way bigger than us!  And you're not supposed to touch them, since they might kick or bite you.  So how do you protect your food???  We were clapping our hands and making noises trying to shoo the horses away, but you really just feel so stupid, knowing the other campers nearby are watching you to see what's going to happen!

As it turned out, we managed to successfully drive the horses away without them touching our dinners!  Huzzah!  But it made me nervous!

With the last of our coals, we managed to make s'mores.  Then we blew up our air mattresses (no small feat, carrying them through the wind from the truck, where our pump was, back to the tents!) and settled in to sleep.  It was still very chilly.  I pulled my hoodie over my head and hoped for even a little bit of sleep, and laughed at Craig all bundled up in his sleeping bag:

This is beach camping?  In June???

But actually, I slept pretty well!  I woke up a few times in the night to roll over, but then went right back to sleep.  It was amazing.  Maybe I should always sleep with a hoodie on?

As soon as he was awake in the morning, Craig made pancakes and sausages for everyone and then we headed over the dune to the beach! 

You could lock your cooler under the table to keep it safe from the horses

Camille and Colton pretty much played all day.  

Building sand castle condominiums

Impressive, no?

I'm not sure if this kite is supposed to be a squid or a jellyfish?  Or something else entirely...?

I spent most of the day wrapped in my towel watching them and watching all the crabs scuttling around me.  That sounds awful, but those crabs were terribly fascinating, once you started paying attention to them!  They'd pop out of those holes and hurl a bit of sand away.  Sometimes they'd come at each other, and a couple times I watched smaller crabs get dragged down into the bigger crab's holes!!!  Yikes!

Kite flying was very popular!

Eventually I was done, so I headed off to take a shower.  It was so cold.  Rinsing my hair actually gave me brain freeze-- I didn't know that was possible!!!!  But as is usually the case, it was worth it to feel clean again!  And even though I'd been kind of cold all day, getting out of the cold shower made me feel warm.  I wandered back to my tent and took a really great nap, waking up right as Craig and the kids came back.  They showered off, too, and then we drove into town for a very early dinner at some Tex Mex place.  Yum.

Colton was so sunburned.  I don't know why we can't ever manage to properly protect our kids from those UV-rays!  We try so hard!

We bought more wood so we could have another campfire and s'mores!  This time when the horses wandered through the campsites, we weren't concerned because we didn't have any food for them to grab.  But the joke was on us, because we'd forgotten about our bag of garbage and the horses snatched it, ripped it open, and dug into that bag so fast!  It was a mess, and we had no way to get the garbage away from them!  Silly horses.  I guess they got a taste of those foil dinners after all...

Garbage or no, Camille was thrilled!

Colt!

Everyone loves foil dinners, I guess...

Happy Camille!

Then the horses started, well, horsing around!  The colt was trying to jump at the other horses and they were clearly annoyed with him, and I was having visions of horses crashing into our tents and breaking everything, it was kind of stressful!  But eventually they moved on and nothing bad happened.  Phew!

Look at the big horse's eyes there!  He is NOT happy about this game!

After that we headed to bed.  Poor Colton was miserable and we were exhausted.  The wind had been blowing the entire time we'd been there, and everything inside our tent was covered in a fine layer of sand.  Gross.  But thanks to my hoodie, I slept pretty well again, even with the tent flapping and snapping in the wind!

As soon as the sun was up we threw everything into the truck and headed out.  That was enough camping for us!  We stopped at a bakery for doughnuts and then just drove and drove and drove.  There's a bridge that we crossed over the Chesapeake and the van ahead of us hit a seagull and it spun out like a helicopter going haywire-- that was wild.  That same bridge goes underground a couple times, and then second time, there was a huge cargo ship that crossed over us right as we were underground and somehow that just seemed crazy, too.

And as is always the case, it was awfully nice sleeping in my own bed again!

Hopefully that was enough horses for Camille for a bit...!

They tried to recreate Ryder's goofy shots from 2014!  😂