Assateague Island

We spent Labor Day Weekend camping at Assateague Island, Maryland. We had never been there before. Oh my gosh. It was unbelievably spectacular. Assateague Island is a part of the National Seashore click here (or here). Braydon and I both agreed, we've never experienced anything like it. Ever. It is absolutely gorgeous. And almost completely unspoiled. Parts of it are entirely undeveloped. The ocean-side of the island is incredible (check out our photos!!!), and the bay-side of the island is incredible (check out our photos!!!), and the fact that there are wild "ponies" (they looked like full blown horses to me) running wild all over the place (check out our photos!!!) just really makes the whole place sorta unbelievable. We're fortunate enough to have seen many gorgeous ocean-front-beautiful-places: the caribbean, california, south carolina, the french riviera, the new england coast, etc. But this was right up there as one of the most beautiful places we've ever seen. And the tenting was super-fun for all four of us too. As you can imagine, K & O loved the whole thing (although we were pretty sure that Kyle would have preferred the creature comforts of being able to go 'home' to a hotel at night instead of a sandy buggy tent! LOL!!!). Other things both K & O would happily do without = port-a-potties (they hate them; who doesn't?!); cold-water-outdoor-showers (Braydon and I loved them but the boys did not); National Park Ranger who pulled Papi over on Sunday afternoon and gave him a $50 Federal Citation Fine for letting the boys ride "freely in the vehicle" and not enforcing the child seat-belt laws (Braydon tried to explain to the boys that the Ranger was, indeed, in the right but the boys were not having it and just repeated over and over and over: "That police man was not good. That was not nice. He needs to GO TO HIS ROOM!!!!!!!"). Here were some of the highlights of this glorious vaca adventure:

• During the drive down (a 4 hour drive for us) we bought sandwiches and had a 'picnic' in the grassy yard of some random fire station somewhere along the route. A couple of the firefighters came out and started chatting with us. They invited K & O into the firehouse (!!!!) to check out the fire engines and use the firehouse potties. Peeing and pooping in the firehouse was a much bigger deal to K & O than the actual firetrucks! LOL!!!
• We all love the ocean. We also discovered on this trip that we all love the Maryland bay too. In fact, all four of us agreed that we liked the bay-side even more than the ocean-side (we were so surprised at ourselves).
• A major highlight of this trip was our first-ever-adventure with Over Sand Vehicle (OSV)tripping (click here). Luckily the timing was perfect: just a few weeks ago we traded in our 'blue car' (VW Passat Station Wagon) and bought the 'red truck' (Ford Explorer). We were up and at 'em by 6:30 am on Saturday. We packed up our stuff, let the air out of the tires, and were off-roading it on miles and miles of desolate pristine beach. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. Unbelievable. We let the boys ride minus-seat-belts and they both got to 'drive' the 'red truck' with Papi 'on no road!' and 'in the sand!' and 'looking for horsies!' and 'loooooooooook at the beaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuutiful ocean!' and as you can imagine it was really idyllic. By 8:00 am we were completely isolated on a perfect stretch of beach drinking iced coffee (H & B) and orange juice (K & O) and eating cereal (H & B) and 4-breakfast-bars-each (K & O -- no joke, they each ate 4 cereal bars and would have had more but there are only 8 in a box and we had never even considered bringing more than one whole box with us). Anyway, the OSV was amazing (see photos below "Assateague Island II").
• Horse poop. For whatever 3-year-old-boy-reason K & O were absolutely obsessed with the piles of horse poop that were randomly strewn about all over Assateague Island. They felt like the had hit the jackpot when they discovered "HORSE POOP!!!" right in our very own campsite.
• Crabcakes. Braydon and I ate the best crabcakes we've ever had. Twice. (Friday dinner and Saturday lunch). Owen had broiled fish. Kyle had french fries. We were all thrilled.
• Sleeping in the tent together. Waking up in the tent together. There's nothing like it.
• Family bonding like only a little vaca can do.
  

P.S. As always, you can click on any photo to see it larger~~~