Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

The Wild Ponies

With our summer winding down quickly, the next week full of meetings for my husband and meet and greets for the kids' schools, we decided to have one last "field trip."  I wanted another adventure and I had recently stumbled upon a beautiful copy of Misty of Chincoteague that my mother had given the boys, and that sparked an idea:  why not go to Chincoteague?  I had never been to Chincoteague before, only to neighboring Assateague with my mother and grandmother over a decade ago.  Since Chincoteague is a National Wildlife Refuge I figured my sons (and I) would be in heaven.  It is a 3 1/2 hour drive, making it 7 hours of driving in one day, nothing to sneeze at, but with all of the wildlife we could potentially see, I reasoned it would be worth it.

Both Chincoteague and Assateague have wonderful websites.  Chincoteague has all of its brochures available online (specific ones on birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians), so I started to hype my kids up about the animals and specifically about the wild ponies, of course!  Our oldest child was excited, the youngest was game, and my husband and I printed the trail map so we could plan our walk on the various wildlife paths.  The maps and other literature we read through planning our hiking made mention of the fact that they do not spray for mosquitoes.  I thought, why would they on a nature preserve?  We have several cans of bug spray in the trunk of the car.  We're good to go.

We packed our car up with a change of clothes, a gigantic cooler, bags full of food, bug spray and sunscreen, and left the house very early to head east to Chincoteague.  Our ride was long, but fuss free- no traffic, clear sailing.  As we drove in, we passed NASA's Wallops Flight Facility (for all you space nerds 🚀.  We would have gone but it is currently closed due to COVID 👎), the rural setting gave way to gorgeous marshland with more herons and egrets than I could tally.  I was starting to get very excited!  This is going to be great!  A beautiful walk, in a totally different environment.  The animals!  The birds!  Cue the music and light shining down from heaven.

A view of Assateague's Lighthouse as we drove in.

Once we entered the Refuge, we parked in the first parking lot that we found.  I saw there was a trail sign near where we parked, the Marsh Trail.  It's only a mile, but we thought we'd check it out before heading elsewhere since we parked right next to it.  As we got out to pack our backpacks, apply sunscreen and bug spray, we began to swat at mosquitoes.  OK, let's get our bug spray on.  We had both Deet and Picaridin sprays.  The mosquitoes kept coming.  In droves.  Bug spray be damned.  These mosquitoes don't care about your bug spray.  OK, well, I thought, let's get moving.  That generally helps, so we set off down the Marsh trail.  Within no time at all, each one of us had a minimum of 50 mosquitoes surrounding us.  The Little One and I probably more.  We had to run to get rid of them.  Run.  The Little One became absolutely hysterical at one point, and I couldn't blame him.  If you look at the following two photographs that his brother took, you can actually see the mosquitoes surrounding him.  At this point, after stopping to swat mosquitoes from his face and body, more surrounded me, and I began to have the full, classic fight or flight reponse, adrenaline and cortisol pumping through my veins.  Then the waves of guilt ensued.  I couldn't believe that we had driven so far.  It was all my idea.  I hyped it up to everyone, crowing about how amazing it would be.  We could not walk like this.  It was totally unbearable. I wanted to try to see the ponies so badly, I know it's never a given that you'll see them.  I was internally sobbing at this point.   Little One was screaming to go back to the car to go home.  What were we going to do?  We were being eaten alive!  My skin was burning with histamine.  My mind was racing.  What. A. Failure.

My poor baby.

I made him keep running back to the parking lot as it was a one mile loop.

Meanwhile N wasn't bothered as badly by the mosquitoes, 

and found a toad and took some photos while his brother and I were in tears.

He then captured a turkey vulture close up.

The back of my legs were so horrifying to him, he took a photograph.

(Lest you think I was exaggerating.  Evidence.)

N and his father were less attractive to the mosquitoes apparently 😒.  I mean, I'm not bitter *ahem* Good for them.  Older brother then proceeded to give me a full analysis of these mosquitoes, which are large and brown with white spots, while ours back at home are smaller and black with white spots.  Once we got back to the parking lot where there were at least less mosquitoes, we decided to head to the road as it is closed to vehicles until 3 pm and circles a large portion of the Refuge, and see what, if any wildlife, we could see there.

There were stunning views, and infinitely less mosquitoes 

walking on the pavement (and out of the marsh).

Wildflowers were in full bloom.

Many beautiful Egrets.

Look closely.  There is a heron next to the egret there.

Direct eye contact with a gull.

Along our road walk we came across this sign.

Beach?! Obviously there's a beach, we're on an island, 

we hadn't even thought of going to the beach but,

the beach equals more wind which in turn equals no mosquitoes, let's GO!!!

After begging and pleading to get back in the car and return home, vowing to never return to this forsaken island, he immediately calmed on the beach collecting shells.

I wearily started praying that this trip might possibly be saved.

This part of the beach is relatively empty.  Shore birds were everywhere.  Ospreys lined the bare tree behind the dunes, crabs scuttled about, and much to the Little One's delight there were fantastic shells all over.

Strutting Sandpiper

Cute Little Guy

Little Man seemed to have forgotten about earlier and ran up and down the empty beach.

Oh, thank God, the horror of being feasted upon had been pushed 

from the forefront of his mind, as he jumped for joy in the surf.

Just of the other side of the dunes were many bare trees where Osprey perched contently. 

This gull is trying to get crafty with our food.

"Nothing to see here!"- Gull

While the boys played in the water, I watched these crabs (Ghost Crabs) peek just their eyes up out of their holes, make sure the coast was clear, head about 4 paces to the right, throw a bunch of sand, head back to their hole, and do it all over again. 

And again.  And again.

The beach is wonderfully empty here.  You can only access it by riding a bike or walking, 

or you can get an OSV permit to drive your car on the sand.  Since it is about 2 1/2 miles from the parking lot to the beach (nobody wants to walk that far) it was empty with the exception of a few people who drove jeeps on to fish.  Neighboring Tom's Cove (where you can practically park on the beach) was however PACKED we saw later in the day when we drove around the island before heading back home.

My baby and I on a seashell collecting expedition.

Funny story:  when reading the website and brochures about the wildlife refuge, I told

R. jokingly "Honey, you are only allowed to collect and remove 1 gallon of empty seashells from Chincoteague per day."  We all laughed.  A gallon of shells!  A gallon!  Who takes that many shells?  R. does.  There is currently a gallon of seashells on our Nature Table out front.

He was deeply involved in whatever he was telling me here.

Hand gesticulation ✋

I love it!

This was his favorite shell, perfectly intact spiral.

We spent a really long, really full day at the beach, and as we headed out,

N found a live horseshoe crab overturned and decided to right it, but was a little tentative.

There we go.

We walked the 2 1/2 miles back to the car, and my husband offered to drive us to the various parts of the island now that it was after 3 and you are permitted to drive around.  He knew how badly I wanted to see the ponies.  We lucked out too because it didn't take us long to find them.  Once I spotted them of in the marshland, I screamed "STOP THE CAR! STOP THE CAR!!!" like the crazed woman that I am and took many photographs.

Wait a second.  Is that them?  Off in the distance?

The ponies!  We saw the ponies!!!

I was exhausted and teary-eyed, but satisfied,

leaving the island happy.

Thank God we were able to save that trip.  And now we all want to go back.  We'll ride our bikes down to the beach, or will walk again, but this time in long sleeves and pants with those nets that you drape over your clothes and body😆

Here is our beautiful copy of Misty of Chincoteague.  It is a classic American Children's novel and is a really wonderful book with lovely illustrations.  We currently have only a couple of chapters left and the boys can wait to hear about what happens to The Phantom and Misty 😊🐎

If you are considering visiting Chincoteague I strongly and enthusiastically encourage you to do so.  Read the following entirely for my suggestions:  

Please be warned:  there are a TON of mosquitoes during the warm/hot months and they do not spray/treat for mosquitoes in any way, nor should they.  If you choose to visit in those hot spring, summer, or even warm fall months, plan to bike ride or walk on the paved roads and/or head to the beach where they are scarce.  If you do choose to walk on the nature trails, wear pants and long sleeves.  Expect to have every part of your body that isn't covered to be bitten.  I strongly suggest one of these net type of coverings.  They are inexpensive and keep the mosquitoes off of you.  I never thought that I'd be the type of person to suggest wearing something of that nature, but here we are 😂.  Otherwise, you could consider waiting until late fall or winter to visit when there is still plenty of wildlife, and there would be less humans and mosquitoes- double bonus!