Road Trip~ Chincoteague VA!
Well we are back! Last week, we all went on our road trip to an amazing little island in Virginia! Chincoteague is famous for its wild ponies, its beaches, and for the book Misty of Chincoteague! When I was a child I read that book over and over again. It was one of my favorites! I read it a while ago to Bunny and we discovered that their big festival called Pony Penning Day still happens every year! I have always wanted to see it and the girls thought it would be fun too, so we made some reservations! The ponies live on the neighboring island of Assateague which is a federal wildlife preserve. Every year the fire department on Chincoteague goes to Assateague and rounds the ponies up, swim then across the channel between the islands. They ten auction off some of the young ponies to raise money for the fire department. People come from all over the country to watch and it is really exciting. This was the 88th consecutive year! Now it case you are sad for the ponies, they actually swim really well and in fact there have been times when the ponies will swim to the other island on their own! The fire department owns the ponies and they are required by the government to maintain, vaccinate, and keep the herd at about 150 ponies. So the roundup allows them to check on the health of the herd and also to sell some of the babies to happy homes! We were able to stay on the island for 6 days and they were amazing! So I will be posting several short posts about our vacation! I hope that you stop back and join me in reliving this fun!
DAY 1:
We started our trip at 4 am on Sunday! The trip was about 11 hours. It was really early and I was hoping that the girls would sleep for a while! They were too excited! Pup finally fell asleep on me shoulder for a while, but Bunny didn’t! So by about 6:30am, everyone was up and ready for some road trip fun! I didn’t pack meal food, just lots of snacks. I really don’t like trying to make sandwiches or anything like that. I figured that a trip to McDonalds would work just as well! 😉 To make some of the trip go a bit faster, I made a bag of surprises for the girls! One new thing each hour and a half or so! This made the trip so much fun for them and it got rid of a lot of the “are we there YET?” cries!
We made it back to the hotel by about 3pm! The wonderful thing about our hotel was that they owned some ponies that lived right there! Which meant that they were able to see ponies right when we got there! Nothing is better then traveling so far to see ponies and not having to wait to see when you arrive! They even have corn available to feed them!
Since we were there earlier then we thoughts, we were able to take a drive over to Asseteauge that evening. And while we drove, we found the wild ponies! There were rounded up already and waiting for the swim. I was so excited to be able to see them! There were all sorts of colts that were so cute! It was amazing to watch them nurse, and play, and to see the ponies trying to keep everyone together! The pictures of them against the marsh grass and blue sky was so beautiful! It was amazing to see them. Really a childhood dream of mine!
After visiting the horses, we drove onward to the beach! The girls got to see the ocean for the very first time! We of course had to stop out and feel it! They were so excited! I think that they were impressed with the waves. Living near the lake meant that they know the beach, but we don’t have waves this big! They couldn’t wait to come back and play on it!
So that was the highlights of our first day! As you can see we ended with a swim and some relaxing! It was the start to a great week! Stop back tomorrow for day two! Did you go on vacation this year? If so, where did you go?