5/9/07 At Assateague Island National Seashore

We woke up this morning to a foggy day. Our campsite is just over the dune from the beach and we can hear the surf. This is the same campsite we had on our first trip with the motorhome back in 2004, a very happy thought! The picture was taken from the top of the dune.


We took a long walk on the beach before lunch. The beach goes on for about 30 miles from where we are to the southern end of the island. There are no roads south of the campground until you get to the very southern end. We probably walked about 2-3 miles before turning back. That's Jon in the picture.


We saw a number of shore birds on our walk. We had our bird book with us and identified this one as a Willet. Don't remember seeing these on the beaches near home in New Jersey.


The surf was pretty wild that day and the fog kept us from seeing very far out to sea or along the beach. On the way back the fog made it hard for us to find the place where we had come over the dune from the campground.


After lunch we went over to the west side of the island, only about a mile away from the beach. We were surprised to find a beautiful clear day there. We came across a wild pony who was scratching an itch on a convenient fence post.


We went back to the east side of the island and took the 3/4 mile nature hike on the dune trail. A little way in we came across a crumbling asphalt road that went on as far as we could see. There was an interpretive sign nearby that said that the road had been installed by developers back in the 1950's. Before they really got started on construction a storm came thorough that flooded the island, causing them to abandon their plans. Shortly afterward the island was designated as a National Seashore.


At many places along the trail we noticed small cone shaped depressions in the sand, as well as squiggly lines. We came to another interpretive sign that said that the depressions were made by ant lions, insect larvae that burrow in the sand and catch other insects (usually ants) that slide into their pits. The squiggly lines are also made by the ant lions. To read more about ant lions, try this link: http://www.archbold-station.org/discoveringflscrub/unit2/unit2antlion.html


The setting sun peeked through a gap in the fog for a few minutes and an amazing bow appeared just over the dune to the east. It wasn't a rainbow, because it wasn't raining and the bow had no rainbow of colors. We looked on the internet when we got home and found that it was a fogbow, something we that had never seen before!