Day 7: Assateague Island & Wild Horses

Saturday was our last full day in Delaware and we were changing things up. No beach on this day. Instead we were going to head down into Maryland and hopefully see some wild horses on Assateague Island.

Getting down to the island would require a 40 minute car ride. You should’ve seen the looks on our spoiled kids faces. 40 minutes!?!? These kids don’t know the pain we do. The long car rides, stuffed into a vehicle with little or no A/C. No electronics, no music on demand. These kids are soft.

We unintentionally picked a great day to go to this island. The island can become overwhelmed with biting flies. Most days visitors have to wear long sleeves and bug repellent with adequate DEET. The bugs hatch in the water of the Chincoteague Bay which is the water between Assateague Island and the mainland. If the wind is West (ie blowing from West to East) it will push the bugs out onto the island and you’re toast. However we had a full day of light East winds which kept the bugs out over the bay. Even when we took the boardwalk about over the marsh we never once saw a bug. We were very lucky.

Right after we crossed the bridge onto the island we saw our first horses. I’ve never seen a wild horse before. Not sure it looked any different to the amateur eye, but they did look very peaceful.

We ventured into the park and made several stops to hike around. It was a very pretty place.

At one part we had to wait for a baby horse and mother horse to move so we could make it back to the car.

Eventually we had our fill and needed to get moving so we could get lunch. We made the drive back to the campground and made lunch. We were originally supposed to stop for McDonalds, but a multi-child meltdown put in a pin in that. In general the kids behavior was good in Delaware, but the drive back from the horsey island was not their best moment.

Once we were back at the campground Allyson and the girls did the pool one more time while Nolan and I ran a couple errands. We really just hung out around the campsite for the rest of the evening. We were leaving for Gettysburg in the morning so we had some packing up to do. We had a decent setup going for a bit, so we had to get all the gear back in the motorhome. Surprisingly it wasn’t too bad to get put away.

Later that night the girls hung out inside and played the Nintendo switch and then went to bed. Allyson and I had another evening to hangout for a while which was great. We don’t get much time without kids on the these so we have to savior it all, even at the expense of our own sleep.