Assateague, MD/Chincoteague, VA (8/1 - 8/16/23)

After biking so much this year, we are now in relaxation mode exploring the beaches of the East and Gulf coast over the next six months. We started in Assateague, MD in the north where we camped in the primitive Assateague National Seashore campground for five days nestled in the sand dunes a few hundred feet from the Atlantic surf. Hearing the waves crashing from the campsite brought back memories of many trips to this location while we raised our boys over the years. This trip we were lucky to be joined by our son Zack and his fiancé Beka.

One of the key features of this national park is the lure of the wild horses (ponies) roaming the island. They are pretty used to people, so they just go wherever they want and can cause traffic jams from time to time.

Another feature is the ability to drive your 4-wheel drive on the beach. Assateague has a 145-vehicle limit over the 12 miles of beach available. On weekends, the limit is reached fairly early in the morning, but on weekdays while we were there, we didn't see the limit reached.

You can also fish from the surf. Here Zack caught a little guy that was returned back to water after his photo shoot.

Like I mentioned before, these wild horses roam the island looking for places to graze and can be found fairly easily. This picture was taken from our campsite.

As much as Assateague Island is primitive with few roads and buildings, just a few miles north in Ocean City you will find the opposite with many restaurants, bars, hotels, and their famous boardwalk. Here we enjoy the bay view at Sneaky Pete's for a pre-dinner beverage before heading over to Crab Alley for more feasting.

Assateague Island runs north to south so the sun rises from the beach and sets on the bay side.

One of my main goals in going to the beach is to satisfy my craving for seafood I have had since we left Maryland for Iowa in 2007. Fresh raw oysters and steamed blue crabs are just not something Iowa restaurants have on the menu. We even introduced Beka to several seafood items she had never had before. Here Zack and I split a dozen crabs for lunch at the Assatateague Crab House.

After staying at the national park with no hookups, we moved over to the full service Sun Outdoors Frontier Town. Although back on the mainland, it was only a few miles for us to drive back to 4-wheel drive beach. This place even has a waterpark that we enjoyed flowing down the lazy river.

Assateague Island is a beautiful place to visit and is essentially a sand bar (barrier island) with the ocean on one side and the bay on the other.

After Zack and Beka left to return back to Iowa, we moved down to the southern side of the Island in Virginia and stayed in Chincoteague at the Sun Outdoors Chincoteague Bay for a few days. This place has recently been significantly revamped and is a pretty nice place to stay.

We made it a point to get back on our bikes after a little break and rode through the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. The town of Chincoteague is fairly bikeable, so we were able to ride from our campsite to the refuge to ride the bike trails in the park. Going to the beach here is very limited for 4-wheel access, but it does have parking to walk over the dunes to get to the beach. While we were on our bike ride, we found a little place where only people on bikes can access a remote portion of the beach. Although we didn't know about this ahead of time and were not prepared, we took note next time we visit to utilize this beach to avoid the more crowded parking lot beaches.

Our campground was also on the southwest side of the Chincoteague Island that was a perfect viewing platform for rocket launches from the NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility. We just happend to be staying here during a launch of a rocket one early morning.

From our campground we were also able to view amazing sunsets from across the bay looking west.

Another sunset view before we move farther south to our next beach.