Virginiacostal

Coastal Virginia

We left the outer banks and went all of 3 miles into Virginia. We stayed at a great camp owned and operated by the city of Chesapeake.
Fairly cheap. Roads to it were barrow with several stretches of deep ditches, but we made it by going slow. It was per season and we had
only several other units spaced around. It was very beautiful. We had been dreading the tunnels under the Chesapeake. Bay for a long
time, but decided to give them a try. It went fairly well. Nancy talked me thru them. We really enjoyed the ponies on Assateague Island. We
got some good shots of them in the wild as well as some that were pastured behind McDonald's. They are very short and bloated looking
as their diet has a very high salt content and they drink about double the amount of water of a normal horse. These horses probably were
escaped from early settlers as they are genetically very similar to moder horses. The ponies of Ocracoke have one less vertebrae than the
modern horses and are similar genetically to the old horses from Spain in that they too are missing the vertebrae. Their ancestors were
likely thrown overboard of escape from the very early Spanish explorers. In both herds the mares are shot yearly with a hormone birth
control dart to control the size and genetic diversity of the herd.