Rest of the Chincoteague/Assateague Trip

The next morning started with a trip to the Blueberry Festival and Craft Festival. I'm not normally a craft festival kind of person and if my mom hadn't been on trip I probably wouldn't have gone but it ended up being pretty cool. Since the festival was so near Pony Penning there were lots of horse crafts plus tons of beachy themed ones as well. My Mom and I got *a ton* of Christmas shopping done for each other. My favorite story from that morning comes from when my Mom and I split up to buy some stuff for each other. When we left Baltimore I hadn't planned to find so much at the craft fair so needless to say I was running low on cash. I was at one of the stands getting my Mom something she really loved only to discover I was $10 short of the total and the guy running the stand didn't take credit cards. Once I figured this out I made sure to take his card and I told him that I'd be calling him that week to place an order for what my Mom wanted. He stopped me, looked me over and told me he thought I looked trustworthy so he would take the money I did have and I could send him a check for the remainder so I wouldn't have to pay shipping on the item. I couldn't believe it, I thought people that trusting didn't exist anymore. Of course I happily wrote him a nice letter and got the check in the mail to him as soon as we got home! It was just nice to have my faith in humanity at least temporarily restored.

After the craft fair it was onto the beach for a while. That night we attended the Fireman's Carnival. It doesn't sound like a big deal (and really it was quite small) but the history behind it all was amazing. To a girl who grew up on Misty, Stormy, Phantom etc... being able to actually attend the Carnival so frequently talked about in those books was like stepping into a fairy tale!

That night also began what ended up being a silly crazy search. To fully understand you have to backup to when Kris and I were on Mackinac Island; now if you remember horses are the main form of transportation on the island. Also Mackinac is significantly farther north than Baltimore which meant I froze most of the time I was there because I only brought 1 pair of jeans and 1 sweatshirt. At that point Kris and I went on the hunt for a hoodie with a horse on it that preferably said Mackinac Island. You would think that wouldn't be hard to find, right?? WRONG! We went into EVERY store on Main Street and had no luck whatsoever. So, back to the present, since we were on the two biggest horse islands in the USA I decided to resume my search for a horse hoodie. That night at least ended up being a fruitless search. After stopping in way too many stores my Mom and I finally called it quits to get some shut eye before our super early but very exciting morning.

ZZZZZZZZ...........

Oh, time to wake up! Well the next morning we arose at some insane hour (I believe 4am) so we could be on the beach by 5 am (or thereabouts). Now my Mom and I are clearly beach people however this is extreme even for us, what would drag us to the beach at that hour you might ask? Why, Horses of course! See there are actually 2 herds of horses on Assateague. Half of the island is in Maryland and the other half is in Virginia. What we saw Saturday was a round up of the Virginia herd. On Sunday they rounded up the Maryland herd and put them in pens on that side. However all the herds need to be together for the swim. So as the light is just breaking over the horizon the Saltwater Cowboys drive the Maryland herd down the beach to join up with the other herd! How cool!!! Here are some pictures from the pretty amazing event...

We weren't the only crazy people!

The first cowboys appear

More of the crowds

Bringing up the rear

  As short as the whole thing was it felt so cool to be that close (again!) to the wild ponies as they were being driven down my favorite location in the world...a beach. Too cool!

Once we got back to the hotel it was sadly time to pack up and check out. :( Before we spent the afternoon on the beach we went to "downtown" Chincoteague to check out some shops and resume my hoodie search. They had a statue of Misty downtown that was quite sweet to see.

After looking in more shops than I care to count I was ready to call the search quits however my mother insisted we check out a few more and we finally hit the jackpot. This one store had about 5 different hoodies all with horses and all either said Chincoteague, Assateague or Pony Penning. Finally I had my hoodie which means we could head back to the beach for our final afternoon.

After napping on the beach to make up for our early start we made a trip down to see ALL the ponies since both herds were now in the pens....

Nap time for the babies

Finally at about 7 I think we left the island. We got back to Baltimore late and my Mom got back to Pittsburgh even later that same night (yes she is crazy!) but it was an amazing weekend full of lots of surprise blessings!