Yesterday was jam packed with everything we love about our vacations, driving, national parks, food, and more food.

The day started off with trying to find a place to eat breakfast. Not much luck here. Although there are places to eat, it’s like the pancakes and waffles type. Don’t get us wrong, here. We love pancakes and waffles. But, we consider them a treat and try to only eat the homemade ones from friends and family (or our own). Anyway, we ended up going to a Starbucks and getting their egg sandwiches and wraps, along with a couple juice drinks.

Once we finished our breakfast, we began our journey to Chincoteague Island, Virginia.

As some of you midwesterners might not know, Chincoteague is an island that is attached to Assateague Island, home of wild ponies. It’s believed that ponies from a Spanish shipwreck swam ashore to Assateague and mixed with local horses. These ponies that are on Assateague have been wild for hundreds of years. Each year, there is a pony swim, where the local firemen from Chincoteague ride on to Assateague and herd some ponies back to Chincoteague to be sold. The earnings go to the local fire department and the ponies that are not purchased are sent back to Assateague Island.

We weren’t able to watch the annual pony swim since that is in July. But, we drove on to Assateague Island and visited the National Wildlife Refuge. We walked a few of the trails in an effort to see the ponies.

For the first hour or two, we only saw evidence of the ponies:

This is as close as we could get once we actually saw some ponies. Look real hard and you might see them.

Look harder.

Once we got a good look at the ponies, we kept walking the trails. We found that there was a lighthouse built on the island due to the many shipwrecks. We couldn’t go into the lighthouse, since it is undergoing major renovations. It turns out that this lighthouse is among many historic lighthouses in the country, along with the one on St. Simon’s Island, GA.

 

We were getting hungry after all of this walking and decided to drive back to Chincoteague for some food. Luckily, we found this awesome place called Captain Zack’s. They serve seafood carryout and it is all very fresh. You walk into the building and there is a big refrigerator with crabs, oysters, you name it, on ice. Once we ordered our meals (Justine ordered the steamed jumbo shrimp and I ordered the crabcakes, more on that later) the woman took the seafood off of the ice and the ingredients out of the fridge and began preparing the meals. Now that’s fresh.

 

Here’s a picture of our food. Some of the best crabcakes and shrimp we’ve had yet.

 

That’s only half of our day so far. Like I said, it was jam-packed. We will get back with post about the second half, later. Now, we are off for another adventure.