In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d share a personal post about a trip I took this fall with my family.  Time to explore and play with my family is one of the things I am most thankful for.

This fall we took a long weekend and went to visit Assateague Island for the first time.  We visited both the Maryland side of the park, and then the next day, the Virginia side.  On the Maryland side of the park, we took a hike on the nature trail, which included what was once Baltimore Blvd.  We learned some history that I never knew about them trying to develop the land many years ago and it getting destroyed by a storm before they could complete it.  The road remains on parts of this nature trail.  You can see this in the first photo below, an image I adore because it showcases my daughter’s personality.

It was rainy our first day, just gray and sprinkling on and off.  We still got to hike a bit, have a picnic on the beach and even play in the waves.  Then the rain really started to come down and chased us back to the car. We were in the park for hours without seeing any of the ponies though.  We saw two at the entrance gate and then none for hours.  Then as we were leaving, there was one just standing in the parking lot watching the chaos of the visitors on a busy weekend afternoon.

Virginia had a different feel.  It felt much more remote.  It was a little cooler outside our second day, with some sun. You have to leave the park and drive over an hour to get between the two park entrances.  Once in Virginia, you pass the NASA space center and then go through Chincoteague, a cute little island with hotels, before the park. Then you cross another bridge to the quiet of nature.  The ponies in Virginia are behind a fenced area and not on the visitor’s beach.  We were able to pull onto the side of the road and see them on the fields in the distance.

In the last photo, you’ll see a close up.  This was a pony that lived in a smaller field on the property of a hotel on Chincoteague. My daughter was a little disappointed at the lack of up close pony experiences so we visited the hotel grounds and got to feed their incredibly beautiful ponies, which was pretty awesome.