pony island
ciao tutti. i know you are just salivating to hear about our weekend adventures on ass island, so i'll cut to the chase.
the weekend was fantastic. well, except for getting to the island and back. it took us six hours on friday evening to get up there, due to terrible bay bridge traffic. jon, tommy, and i arrived around 12:30am; julie, matt, jess and robin were already there, fending off pygmy deer and roasting marshmallows. let me tell you about these pygmy deer: they are terrifying. more terrifying than ponies. friday night as i was walking to the bathrooms to brush my teeth, i saw a small group of them on the side of the road, just munching grass and being cute and tiny. "oh, how adorable," i thought to myself. "tiny deer." then i caught the eye of the male deer (who is about three feet tall). he stared me down, and all of a sudden i noticed that he had ENORMOUS horns. he kept staring, and edged closer, and then i decided that was a good time to break into a run. thankfully he did not challenge me to a head-butting duel, as these deer are apparently wont to do, so all was good.
pictures are behind the cut. be prepared for excessive wildlife photos.
saturday morning, after waking up in our tent (which was amazingly only like 200 feet from the ocean) and going swimming, tommy and i took a drive to get some coffee. (yes, this was "camping" like mountain climbing is actually walking up that hill next to your house, so i managed to survive the hardships.) anyway, on the drive over the bridge that connects the island with the mainland, we saw lots and lots of ponies eating in the marshes! they were so pretty. so were the marshes.
OH MY GOD PONIES
i got a little carried away.
some more swimming ocurred, and everyone messed around at the campsite, doing not a whole lot of anything. which was nice. (except i kept ocassionally stalking the deer.)
if i ever record an album, this is totally going to be the cover.
that evening, ponies took over the campsite and caused quite a stir amongst everyone. and they peed.
i actually didn't mean to take a picture of a pony peeing; it was just lucky timing!
two species, coexisting warily on the tiny island.
saturday night we went to the assateague crab shack, where we waited 45 minutes in the game room with 35 screaming children for our all-you-can-eat crab/shrimp/corn/fried chicken meal.
sunday involved more swimming, more lounging about, and packing up camp and heading home around noon. it was a lovely weekend; we couldn't have asked for better weather, the water was still warm enough to swim in, and there was tons of beer, food, and smores, which was really all i wanted. mad props to ms. jess paar for setting it all up. i highly recommend the experience to all.
Comments
googling on "did you like camping at assateague island" got me here. Thanks! I needed those photos (was wondering if there was any shade at all)
loved your report on assateague. never been there but i want to go. can't get reservations for this summer but i will reserve next summer. take care.
Barry
er googling "stalking deer" got me here. a really hot photo of "tom reads" came up in google images for "stalking deer". i had to see who this tom bloke was and why he was stalking deer. i'm not actually planning on stalking deer, doing a radio story with some hunters etc. they won't take me hunting until i get some stalking training cause they reckon i'll scare everything off.
Post A Comment