Delmarva State of Mind

Coming from Washington D.C., people afraid of heights and bridges don’t have good options for reaching the Delmarva Peninsula. The shortest path runs through Annapolis, but it still requires a lofty transit above Chesapeake Bay. The Bay Bridge east of Annapolis cuts an imposing figure.

Between the rush-hour traffic, the gusting wind, the rain and the bridge’s 4.5-mile span felt much longer. The bridge itself bugged me – its design made it feel like someone bolted together multiple bridge designs into a working span. The wind and tight traffic did not improve my opinion. My knuckles stay white till we reached the eastern shore. The 20-plus miles of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel at the peninsula’s southern end were far less harrowing.

Fifty miles from D.C., we had arrived at Delmarva. The peninsula sits between Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, the Atlantic Ocean and a handful of rivers. The land includes most of Delaware and the eastern shores of Maryland and Virginia. Virginian’s portion of the peninsula has no geographic connection to the rest of Virginia, although the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel now ties Delmarva to Virginia Beach.

The water that separates Delmarva from the rest of the mid-Atlantic might as well be an ocean. The difference was felt almost immediately. After traversing the highly urbanized area around D.C. and southern Maryland, Delmarva felt pastoral. At 30,000 people, Salisbury, Md. was the only city of any size we passed, and a convenient bypass took us to U.S. 13, Delmarva’s main north-south route

 Rain pelted the whole route to Chincoteague Island. The fertile plains of Delmarva had been harvested for the year, and the wide-open tracts felt light-years away from the ragged Blue Ridge range. Rush hour ended quickly. For long stretches, we had the highway to ourselves. While the middle ground of Delmarva hosts small towns and factories, the real surprise came at the edge of Virginia.

Chincoteague from the Assateague Lighthouse

With daylight at a premium, we passed the NASA research center and took the long, flat causeway to Chincoteague Island. Just a week after we visited, the research center was in the news for a satellite launch that turned into a fireball at takeoff. We made one wrong turn (my sense was direction was shot at this point, but soon ended up at the Chincoteague Inn. Main Street was already quiet, and we expected a quiet night once we at the motel. At three stories the hotel was one of the island’s tallest buildings. With all of Chincoteague still on septic systems, they could not build the condo towers that ruined summer destinations along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

We had only just arrived when a series of sirens erupted across the island. We worried they warned of an incoming storm. We later discovered that the sirens summoned the island’s volunteer fire department; at seven miles long and three miles wide, it was an expedient system for marshaling fire help.

By the time they stopped, we had placed an order with the Chincoteague Diner. Minutes later, we had a seafood feast, with a crab meat melt for Nancy and a fried flounder sandwich for me. We sat on the second-floor balcony with a bottle of wine.

Stately house on Chincoteague

Barely any noise reached us till morning. Powered by a quick breakfast, we crossed a shorter bridge connected Chincoteague to Assateague Island, protected as a national wildlife refuge and a national seashore.

Some wildlife refuges are spartan affairs without paved roads or marked trails. Chincoteague’s reputation, built off of Marguerite Henry’s famed children’s book Misty of Chincoteague, immortalized the island’s annual roundup of feral horses that live in the refuge. With a diet based on nutrient-poor grasses, the horses don’t grow much larger than ponies. Despite their size, they remain wild and many tourons have been on the receiving end of well-earned bites and kicks.

The book cements an old legend about the horses descending from Spanish breeds that escaped from a galleon that wrecked off the coast. Others say the horses grazed there so their owners could avoid paying taxes on them, and they gradually became feral. With the legend printed in a beloved children's classic, it's the story most choose to believe.

 Among the marshes and shallow lakes of the refuge, we were immediately struck by the volumes of migratory birds that included egrets, ducks, herons, gulls sandpipers and geese. A blotch of white among the brown vegetation was typically a resting egret.

Beach at  Assateague National Seashore

 It isn’t a vacation without a beach, even if the waters were far too cold for anything more than a leisurely stroll in the sand. The weather shifted rapidly out here, with clouds threatening rain and sunny skies then a layer of gray moving back in. Assateague combines a number of different ecosystems in a short amount of space. Not far from the beach lies a dense pine forest. The Woodland Trail breaks it up.

As it meandered, the trail opened a window onto the refuge’s most famous forest dwellers. Our first glimpse of the horses came through binoculars. In several marshy groves at the edge of our vision, small herds grazed. They moved relatively quickly across the plain, as if wary of predators.

Try to find the Delmarva fox squirrel

A sighting of the graceful horses could not distract us from one of Assateague’s rarer denizens. Along the path, Nancy spotted a Delmarva fox squirrel, a species native only to the peninsula and once nearly wiped out due to deforestation.

The refuge was critical in restoring fox squirrel populations, but it is still classified as endangered and inhabits no more than 10 percent of its historic range.

Much larger and with more silvery fur than a gray squirrel, the Delmarva squirrel we encountered quickly broke into the underbrush then climbed high onto one of the pines before vanishing into the canopy.

Woodland trail sika deer sighting (rear only)

As the squirrel departed, but Assateague’s other oddity made a brief cameo. For a few seconds, a male sika deer walked unassumingly on the trail. Smaller than any North American ungulates, the sika deer were imported from Asia and originally housed in a local petting zoo.When the zoo became too expensive to maintain, the elk were released onto Assateague. They compete with local deer for resources. But once spotted, their differences are clear; the male we spotted had short, slender horses and a dense brown coat.

As the day stretched on, the horses grazed closer to the road. Horses had littered the trail with droppings but now, they all stuck to the marshlands. By the late afternoon, the horses had crept within 10 feet of the road, ignoring the gawkers and only moving on when their appetites were sated.

For another perspective, we ascended the Assateague Lighthouse, which stands 142 feet above the refuge forests. Finished just after the Civil War, the lighthouse was originally on the island’s edge but changes in the barrier island’s shape now leave it closer to the middle. The islands and waters of the Virginia coast came into full view from the island’s tallest spot.

Assateague Lighthouse

In the afternoon, the refuge opens the 3-mile wildlife loop through the wetland to cars. The road circles Snow Goose Pool, where thousands of waterfowl congregate through the colder months. Here in the floodplain, where the waters were reduced by flood control measures, we saw only a single white-tailed deer crossing the marshy ground.

After a day of exploring the refuge, we went for an early dinner at Bill’s Prime Seafood and Steaks. We started with an oyster appetizer to go with pours of local wine. Even on Delmarva, Virginia produces excellent Cabernet France and steel-tank. Chardonnay. We had a needed seafood feast, our last for this trip. After dinner, we walked to a park on Chincoteague Bay where ducks eagerly awaited handouts and watched the a silver of sunset escape from beneath the dense cloud cover.

Ponies are not Chincoteague’s only feral animals. In the quiet seasons, feral cats everywhere. They seem wise to have settled here. Between migrating birds and seafood, there was nothing scrawny about these cats. Most sported a bulky, well-fed look. Some even let us approach. After dinner at Bill’s, one cat let Nancy pet him before darting off into the Chincoteague night.

Despite their massive size, these cats were nimble. In the morning, we found cat prints trailing on the hood, windshield and roof. The less-known cats of Chincoteague had been busy during the night.