Assateague Island, a horse paradise off the coast of Maryland

After the Woodstock shows, we went to Assateague Island, MD.  Assateague Island is a primitive state park on a small island off the coast of Maryland that is home to about 300 wild horses that roam freely on the island.  They are smaller in stature because of the saltgrass in their diet.  Every Thursday in July since 1930, the local firemen round up all the horses and swim the horses from Assateague Island,MD to Chincoteague Island, VA, only about an eight minute swim.  An auction is held for many of the horses to keep the population in check.  The horses are generally bigger once they get to a new habitat since they're not eating the saltgrass.  We had a beautiful beachfront campsite for the first night.  It was at the base of a big sand dune, over which is the Atlantic Ocean.  We knew that one of the rules is no generators from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am.  We figured, "ah...we'll be on the beach getting the ocean breeze and it will be fine."  We pretty much went to bed right after 10:00, after all of our lights and AC went off.  Around 2:00 am, we both woke up hotter than hell!  I seriously debated just going outside the bus and sitting in a chair until morning.  We spent a rather restless and hot night on Assateague Island, and as 6:00 am rolled around, nobody else turned on their generators.  By 7:00, I said screw it, and turned ours on for some AC.  It's a beautiful place, but quite hot in the summer without AC.

We were paid up for the next night, so we went across the bridge to Ocean City and found Crabs to Go, a local restaurant that serves crab and seafood.  It's family run, and the family all loved Sugaree and came out to check her out.  We took our dozen steamed crabs and a pound of beautiful shrimp back to Assategue Island and ate and hung out for the day.  As evening rolled around, we headed back to Ocean City and hit a Walmart to park the bus and stay for the night.  We cooked a nice steak and had dinner and went to bed reasonably early to hit the road for Lockn' the next morning, nestled in cool air conditioned comfort.

This was our camping spot on Assateague Island, with the ocean just over that dune