If you’ve ever wanted to spend the day sitting on the beach watching herds of wild horses play in the waves Assateague National Seashore is the place to be. On this 37-mile-long barrier island the horses roam and you will feel like you have been transported to another time and place. These feral horses are thought to be survivors of a shipwrecked Spanish galleon although there are numerous tales that claim their origin. People say they are hard to spot as they spend their days sleeping and grazing around the island although we were lucky and were able to view dozens of them just about everywhere.
Once on the island there is little need for a car. It is flat for biking with clearly marked paths that lead to the beaches, through an internal forest and over the Verrazano bridge to the mainland. Assateague wasn’t always an island. It became one filled with secluded beaches and horses in 1933 when a storm passed through and separated it from the mainland of Fenwick Island. Local residents were also disconnected and supported themselves through aquaculture and farming the oysters and clams in the surrounding waters. Over the years there have been numerous attempts by developers to make it into a resort town and lucky for us they never passed keeping much of the island wild. Today it is part National Seashore and part State Park with some houses scattered about.
Some of Assateague Island is in Virginia and some is in Maryland. We stayed in the Maryland side a few nights in the State Park campground and in the National Park campground a few nights. The State Park campground was “resort like” with nice hot showers and numerous “camp like” activities planned. There was tie dyeing t-shirts, kayaking excursions and beach fishing lessons. The beach and campground were populated, and some visitors brought their own tiny houses. The National Park campground was more isolated and primitive, and the beach was more secluded. We loved our spotting of a Silka deer and Blue crab, the Maryland state crustacean as they wandered about. Horses roamed the dunes at both campgrounds. Although we tried our best to keep a distance to protect them, they didn’t follow the rules quite as well.
On our way out of town we visited the National Park Visitor Center on the mainland and experienced exhibits on the history and geology and explored a marine touch tank. We attended a ranger program on the ancient horseshoe crab whose existence dates back 445 million years ago. That is about 200 million years before the dinosaurs. We learned that their blue blood plays an essential role in modern medicine. For lunch we stopped at a local crab shack for fresh all you can eat crab. Our waitress taught us how to crack the crab and gave us an assortment of butter and spices to dip the crabmeat into. It was an authentic local food experience.
