Happy Monday, DMV! It’s July 27.
A neighbor invited my family to visit her beach house in Chincoteague, Virginia, during the annual pony swim. We couldn’t make the date work for the actual swim this Wednesday, so my daughter and I drove down for the weekend’s events ahead of the swim.
On the road Saturday afternoon, we hit the bottleneck of slow traffic pouring across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. As we came onto the bridge, my daughter got nervous as she eyed the long spindly structure over the vast expanse of water. I told her that some drivers are afraid of crossing the bridge and hire someone to take over the wheel for them.
We carried on south, passing signs for historic sites, then corn and soy fields. We whooped in surprise and delight as we passed NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility because we are nerds about rocket launch sites. Then we arrived in charming Chincoteague, where we've been soaking up the sleepy beach town vibe and meeting the ponies corralled ahead of the swim.
Ponies corralled on Assateague Island ahead of the annual pony swim. (Alisa Tang)
You may be wondering: What is the pony swim? Here’s a brief explainer from the Chincoteague Vacation Guide:
“Two herds of wild horses make their home on Assateague Island, separated by a fence at the Maryland-Virginia line. The Maryland herd is managed by the National Park Service. The Virginia herd is owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company. Each year the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company purchases a grazing permit from the National Fish & Wildlife Service. This permit allows the Fire Company to maintain a herd of approximately 150 adult ponies on Assateague Island. The Fire Company controls the herd size with a pony auction on the last Thursday in July. Each year tens of thousands of spectators come to watch the Saltwater Cowboys swim the pony herd from Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island.”
Foals in the corral. (Alisa Tang)
This year is the 101st annual pony swim. Last year, 88 foals sold at the auction, bringing in a record total of $652,600, according to the International Chincoteague Pony Association & Registry, which documents the Chincoteague pony breed.
(Alisa Tang)
This morning at 4:30 a.m., just before this landed in you inbox, we headed out to catch the ponies of the herd from the northern end of Assateague Island walk down to the corral on the southern end of the island ahead of the swim. I’ll share more tomorrow.
Here’s a pic of my daughter from our outing yesterday at Assateague Island National Seashore.
(Alisa Tang)
I treat my Daily Dose as a community gratitude journal and love doing it. Please consider supporting my work with a one-time, monthly or yearly donation to help keep me going. Do you know anyone who would enjoy reading me? Forward this to them to help me grow. For newcomers: To subscribe, click here. To read archive posts, delve in here.
📰 News around the DMV
🍨 Things to do
📷 Your joy
(Jenni Glenn Gingery)
As it happens, I received pony photos from a reader!
Jenni Glenn Gingery, of Rockville, Maryland, is visiting Ocean City this week and came upon this scene.
“We got caught in what I have been calling a ‘horse jam’ on the Assateague National Seashore Wednesday morning when a foal decided to take a break in the middle of the entrance road to the park,” she wrote in her submission.
“I had told my 9-year-old we might not see any ponies, so this was quite an unexpected treat to be able to be so close. We were one car back and were able to get out for a bit to walk around. I took this shot zoomed in so we could stay 40 feet back.”
🐴
