assateague island national seashore overnight

#Assateague island national seashore overnight free#

The campsites that are away from the beach offer a little more protection against the elements. The campsites closest to the boardwalk that leads to the sea are NOT a good choice since people will walk on your site to get to the ocean. Also know that there are no campsites with ocean view since there are dunes that separate the campground from the ocean (that is not clear on the map). Expect that people will walk into your campsite if there are horses on it. Horses will come on your campsite and smell your dog, so if you have a dog that is likely to react to that, either keep him in your rig when a horse approaches or do not come to the island. Dogs are accepted in a few loops and adjacent beaches (and please keep them on a leash at all times). Keep all your food inside your vehicles at all times unless it is in a plate or bowl in front of you. If you consider coming here, make sure to reserve ahead and know that the mosquitoes are pretty bad in the summer months (July and August are the worst there were none while we were there mid-October). I feel very torn about places like these. These horses may be corralled and no longer be able to freely roam the island if visitors continue to violate the well-posted park rules. So, even if the beach is beautiful and wild (and not littered! I could not find one piece of trash on it!!), we won’t be back. (excerpt from here ).Īnd it has to stay that way. Regardless, today the horses are wild and, for the most part, left to fend for themselves. Another theory is that during colonial times, residents on the mainland brought horses to graze on the island to avoid taxation on animals living on the mainland. Domesticated horses could have swam ashore from sinking ships or could have been thrown off of ships that had run aground in an attempt to lighten and refloat the ship. Though nobody knows for sure how they got there, it is certain that they were not originally wild. Horses have been on Assateague Island for over 300 years. Unfortunately, people are not scared of horses like they are of bears, so they just leave food outside unattended even if this is a very clear rule. Like bears, if the horses get used to humans feeding them, they will tear into the tents to get food, raid picnic tables, and even push people out of the way to get to the food sources. One died last year after being fed commercial dog food… Many get hit by cars because they associate vehicles with food.

Of course they behave like this because people feed them to take pictures with them or try to pet them. They reminded me more of giant raccoons than the Camargue horses of the animal channel of my youth…

#Assateague island national seashore overnight free#

I know I might be a hopeless romantic, but when I hear « camping on an island where wild horses roam free », I have images of the white Camargue horses galloping free in harmony on the beach… Maybe that’s why I was surprised to see pissed off horses stealing bags of chips from campsites and being aggressive with dogs and people.