T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE, NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING, NOT EVEN A MOUSE…….
Day 6 – Well, the mice were probably running around our house in NY since the kitties weren’t home & couldn’t terrorize them anymore! From what we saw on the home security feed this morning, it was snowing. A White Christmas for upstate NY? Here at Assateague, 41 degrees, foggy & cloudy at 7:15 a.m.
The fog cleared around 9:00 and we looked out over the marsh. The wild horses were grazing near the RV. Still cloudy but the sun was peaking out. Windy. The girls don’t know what to make of the horses. They’re so big, their eyes say, as they stare outside at the horses.
Click on any picture below to see a slideshow.
We listened to Christmas music while catching up with the blog & the pictures, had lunch, then left to drive around and see what we’d find, cameras ready.
We drove around Assateague Island. Hardly anyone here. We stopped at a wonderful, long boardwalk and walked it through the marsh. It was 48 degrees & windy so it felt pretty cold, but it was lovely out. We saw a horse near the end of the boardwalk and several more surrounded by people taking pictures on the sand dunes.
Then we drove to Chincoteague Island, not realizing that it was a fairly long drive to do round trip in one afternoon AND explore the wildlife refuge there, too. But we had the opportunity to check out two campgrounds near Chincoteague that were still open for the winter. Other campgrounds in the area were closed. The two that were open were not someplace we could stay in the future – one turned out to be a fancy retirement/summer home community for Rvers & they didn’t offer overnight camping; the other might have been nice at one time but it had turned into a dive with shacks & rusted out old trailers & the roads were almost impassible with puddles in potholes.
Right before Chincoteague we came to Wallops Island, home of the NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility.
Chincoteague Island was a lot different than Assateague Island. Assateague is State & Federal land so there isn’t development: no stores, no condos, only park services (when they are open to the public and not shutdown). Chincoteague was populated and obviously a popular summer resort town; it was pretty much closed down & empty off-season.
We drove out to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge to take a drive-thru & see if it would be worth coming back to explore when we had more time. There are horses here, too, but we didn’t see any. (A popular legend tells of ponies that escaped a shipwrecked Spanish galleon in the 17th century & swam ashore.) The wildlife drive was very nice. It would be a good place to ride bikes & to kayak. We got a few pictures but didn’t stay long.
The drive to & from each Island took about 1 ½ to 1 ¾ hours each way. The drive itself was on backroads & very nice, through farmlands, very small & quaint towns, and some areas had beautiful, pine tree-lined streets. On the way back to Assateague, it was dark and the Christmas decorations & lights were pretty.
We got back to the RV close to 6 p.m., had dinner, fed the girls, and kicked back with our books for our own peaceful Christmas Eve. It was a good day.
……..AND TO ALL, A GOOD NIGHT.