Day 4- Happy 4th of July

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Our morning began with a 3-hour cruise (insert Gilligan's Island joke here). We jumped in the dinghy and circumnavigated Chincoteague  Island. Every shore hosted beautiful bird life.
The Chincoteague lighthouse was standing guard.
But the highlight to any visit in this area is cruising the shore of the next island to the north, Assateague Island, and looking for the famous wild ponies. Legend has it they are the descendants of horses brought to the new world by Spanish Conquistadors in the 1500's who survived a shipwreck then became feral.
In grade school you may have read a book titled Misty of Chincoteague, about a family's interactions with the wild horses. It was the stuff the dreams of 8 year old little girls were made of. 😍 The author and the horse were from this area. Way back when I was in grade school there was a campaign asking kids to save pennies in milk cartons to donate to a Save the Wild Horses Group to buy food & veterinary care for the herds. Today they are allowed to maintain themselves without human interference. 


The heat was very oppressive today, fit for nothing but ice tea & watching the tide roll by. I did take the wagon to the grocery for gallon jugs of water and some odds & ends. Brent did some boat chores. Once the sun starts to go down things cool off a bit, and the seafood bar next door has some really good live music playing.  It's pretty nice to sit on our deck to listen & sing along.

Then suddenly it was like a scene from the Hitchcock movie "THE BIRDS"! A hundred Bonaparte Seagulls were going crazy swarming at the stern of the boat. Really close, birds flying everywhere. A little boy had dumped his bag of potato chips into the water and the current had drifted them under our hull. The birds were catching them as they came out the other side! LOL. This photo is after the chips had drifted farther from the boat & most of the excitement was over:
Now for some fireworks viewing from the bow, then an early night. We're moving north at dawn.

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