Wild Horses

May 16, 2011
Harkers Island, Beaufort and Shackleford Banks NC
Day # 4 

What a difference a day makes, or a good night's sleep!  We love our new memory foam GEL topper from Costco!  The sun was out, it was warm and the campground didn't look half bad.  Looking in one direction is the sound and the other is a fire station, a good thing to have across the street, actually.

We took a short drive to the end of the island to the  Cape Lookout National Seashore visitor center.  There we spoke to a ranger about Shackleford Bank's wild horses, or ponies as they are known.  We've always wanted to go see them, so we drove down to Beaufort to board  a boat for a 15 minute ride over to the island.



One of the historic Beaufort waterfront homes

 　
There were about a dozen people on the beach where we landed on the island. Some were waiting to go back with the boat we came on and a group of women were sunbathing. A couple of the departing people told us about the horses they'd seen (even a foal) just over the nearby dune. We could see one atop a hill a few hundred yards away.

So, what did we do? We headed down the beach and around the end of the island. Then we walked through the brush, grasses, dunes, marshes (getting our feet wet), trees, tidal debris and beach sand for about an hour. And all we saw was horse poop, or manure, if you will. If the horse 'rest areas' are any indication, there must be hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of wild horses on that island!

Jim, the 'city kid' who has very little patience waiting for anything, was more than ready to go back to the beach where we got off the boat. Actually, I was surprised he'd lasted this long, this is the same person who will tire of waiting for a fish to bite. If it takes longer than three minutes, he states that 'there aren't any fish here' and he's done fishing. So, we headed back, cutting diagonally across the end of the island.




Found them!


As we climbed atop a grassy dune and looked off in the distance...THERE THEY WERE! Just ahead were four horses peacefully grazing. I pulled out my telephoto lens and took a few shots. Then we moved to the next small hill, a little closer and took a few more. We got closer and closer...they knew we were there and couldn't care less. So, these are WILD horses, huh? I told Jim that I was sure that if I'd brought a few sugar cubes, and apple or a few carrots the whole lot would be eating out of my hand!



They weren't even afraid of the city kid!



I'll bet I could have gotten closer

Okay, we found our 'wild' horses, mission accomplished. Besides, we were getting hungry so we headed over the next dune in the direction of the beach that we would leave from in a hour or so. We crested that dune and...OMG! We were back at the same spot we started from. In other words, if we'd just climbed over the FIRST dune we saw when we got off the boat, and gone in the direction that the departing passengers had told us, we would have seen those four 'wild' horses in about two minutes, or 100 yards or so away! Had a good laugh over that...


We sat in the sand at the base of a dune and pulled our sandwich that we'd decided to share and instantly we were spotted by one very observant seagull...who had a BIG mouth. We didn't even have the sandwich unwrapped yet, apparently they KNOW the Subway bag. So 'big mouth' and all his yelling attracted 50 or so more of his little friends. I told Jim not to even think about sharing with our audience. There they stood, ten feet in front of us, with all those little beady bird eyes trained on our lunch. 'Big mouth' stood his ground trying to fight all the others off, it got ugly. All would have gone well if Jim hadn't felt bad for 'Gimpy', one of the gulls with a badly broken leg, who stood next to him, begging pitifully. The rest of our lunch time consisted of me trying to distract all the greedy ones while Jim flipped 'Gimpy' some food. What ever happened to them chasing fishing boats for food?

Our research revealed this:
Seagulls like - Wheat bread, turkey, cheese, lettuce, peppers, black olives and onions.
Seagulls hate - Oranges...literally spit the dang thing out.


Later we visited a Maritime Museum in Beaufort, got an ice cream to eat on the way to Morehead City and Atlantic Beach, the barrier island off Morehead. The eastern end of the island is home to Fort Macon. It has been beautifully restored and they have made it somewhat of a museum, recreating what many of the sections would have looked like in several wartime periods.

Stopped on the way back to Harkers Island at a fruit and vegetable stand that stood in front of an acre of strawberry plants. The feature sign said 'Strawberries'...of course, they didn't have any strawberries. Got some good looking tomatoes...oh and they had some ROUND zucchini! Who knew?