So how many of you (mostly the 20-40 age crowd) remember one of your parents reading to you the children’s book “Misty of Chincoteague”? Cathryn recalls reading it to our kids and loving it herself, a story about the wild ponies on the island of Chincoteague, a true story.
So today we went to the Island of Chincoteague and saw the wild ponies,most of which are pintos. There are numerous legends about how these 2 herds came to be here, but the most enduring is of a Spanish ship wrecked on the shores in the 1700s, and these are the descendants of the horses which succeeded in swimming to shore. Whatever the truth, these herds survive in the (mostly) wild today and remain beloved by the surrounding communities.
The Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge is beautiful, is a birder’s paradise, and today was sunny, calm and mild (mid 60s). We had a late lunch of delicious crab cake sandwiches at a waterfront spot in Onancock where we’re also staying tonight. It’s a small, neat and tidy town on the western shore of the DelMarVa peninsula, the Chesapeake Bay side. The peninsula is mostly inhabited by farmers and “men of the sea”, fishermen, crabbers and oyster men. Lovely and bucolic.
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