Brr

This weekend, DBF and I took a very well-needed weekend vacation to Assateague Island in Maryland. Now let me give you a little history - DBF is the camping/hunting/fishing/"throw me in the woods for two weeks with just a toothpick and a bundle of steel wool and I'll be fine" type of guy, so one night camping was definitely no biggie for him. Me on the other hand? I've never even been camping in my life before. I'm all for the nature and the wilderness, but I prefer to appreciate it from a warm, dry car, or perhaps through a window of a nice, cozy house. But I was really excited about giving camping a go, especially considering how much DBF loves to camp.
We left at 7 am on Saturday morning for our 5 hour drive down to Maryland. I tend to get car sick pretty easily, so I made sure to take 2 dramamine pills. I probably should have just taken one because about 10 minutes into the drive, I started getting very sleepy. I'm talking sleepy like its painful to keep my eyes open. Sleepy like I'm in the middle of a sentence, and I doze off. It was crazy! Poor DBF made almost the entire drive with me snoozin' up a storm beside him.
We arrived around noon and while going into the check-in building, a horse is grazing outside on the grass. How cool, we thought! It will probably be the first of many we see! (Assateague Island is known for its herds of wild horses) We drive to our little patch of earth and set up camp. Now, by "we", I really mean DBF got busy and I stood around yawning, still fighting off the drugs and trying to pretend like I was being helpful and knew what I was doing. Couldn't have the other campers thinking I'm a novice afterall! Here's our cute little tent:
Notice the cloudy, overcast sky? Yeah, we did too. It was around 50 degrees, which wasn't so bad. But the wind was gusting about 30 miles an hour, which was pretty bad. DBF had a heck of a time setting up the tent with the wind blowing like that. It was also misting, and we were a little afraid of what the weather had in storm for us. This was the view from our campsite. After grabbing a quick lunch, we took a stroll on the beach. We were both wearing two to three layers each and hats - it was COLD! Can you see the sand blowing in this picture? We walked with our backs to the wind and then cut back onto land to walk back to camp so we wouldn't have sand blowing in our faces. There is something so beautiful about the ocean though, and I always feel so relaxed when I'm near water. We found a couple beautiful shells and rocks along our walk, but no horses!

Not liking the look of those storm clouds!

We went out to dinner (too windy and rainy to make a campfire and cook anything unfortunately - we were both looking forward to a fire) and headed back to hunker down for the night. I was surprised at how warm we were in the tent, especially considering how hard the wind was blowing. By this time, it was raining pretty hard and the sound of the rain hitting the tent was so relaxing. The only problem was the wind kept blowing the tent around all night, which kept waking me up. DBF slept like a rock. In the morning, we were pleasantly surprised to see a couple horses snacking on the grass a couple campsites down. I took a bunch of pictures, but it was so windy that I couldn't get a steady shot and most of the pictures turned out all blurry. This one came through though. This gal was one of about only five horses we saw during our whole weekend. It was so cool to see the horses grazing about wherever they wanted to. I wish we could have seen more, but it was just too late in the season. They drive off the majority of the horses each season onto the mainland to keep the population in check.
Notice the little birds hovering around the horse? The horse is probably thinking, "Won't you guys ever leave me be? All I ask for is a little solo snack time!" We'll definitely have to go again sometime during the season. I'd really love to see the herds of horses running wild!