Still in Beaufort
We leave Beaufort tomorrow morning for Swansboro town docks. They will have a buffet dinner for us when we all arrive Sunday night. The weather has been great, it's in the high 70's near the ocean. We have been looking around the town and there was lots to see. Yesterday we went shopping at the Piggly Wiggly! I got a squeal of a deal on beer! The marina's are great, they usually have a courtesy car you can borrow for an hour or two for shopping or some have bikes you can borrow.
The Piggly Wiggly!
We also did a tour through a cemetery that is one of the oldest in North Carolina. A lot of solders from the civil war and also slaves are buried here.
Today we moved from the dock to an anchor just in front of the town. We needed more exercise so we went for a dinghy ride over to Carrot Island to walk around and look for the wild horses.Beaufort's Wild Horses of the Rachel Carson Reserve (part of the N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve)
Like the wild Shackleford mustangs, Beaufort's wild horses can only be reached by boat, where they have free run of the main area of Rachel Carson Reserve, made up of Town Marsh, Carrot Island, Bird Shoal and Horse Island. Another part of the reserve called Middle Marshes is not accessible to the horses. The reserve acreage is not suitable for human habitation and has extremely little fresh water, which is mostly ground water the horses find by digging. Unlike North Carolina's other three groups of wild horses, the Beaufort horses' lineage is not isolated to the bloodlines of the Colonial Spanish Mustangs, though they surely carry some of that historic heritage. These horses are descended from stock kept on these islands in the 1940s by the Beaufort doctor who then owned the land. The original herd consisted of "Banker Ponies", like those on Ocracoke, along with some domestic breeds - mainly Quarter Horses. Though they are today considered "feral" horses, many of them plainly exhibit the characteristics of the wild Outer Banks horses descended from the spanish mustang stock that first arrived on these barrier islands as far back as the early 1500's. In fact, some of these horses carry the primitive markings of the most ancient of wild horse breeds and types
Like the wild Shackleford mustangs, Beaufort's wild horses can only be reached by boat, where they have free run of the main area of Rachel Carson Reserve, made up of Town Marsh, Carrot Island, Bird Shoal and Horse Island. Another part of the reserve called Middle Marshes is not accessible to the horses. The reserve acreage is not suitable for human habitation and has extremely little fresh water, which is mostly ground water the horses find by digging. Unlike North Carolina's other three groups of wild horses, the Beaufort horses' lineage is not isolated to the bloodlines of the Colonial Spanish Mustangs, though they surely carry some of that historic heritage. These horses are descended from stock kept on these islands in the 1940s by the Beaufort doctor who then owned the land. The original herd consisted of "Banker Ponies", like those on Ocracoke, along with some domestic breeds - mainly Quarter Horses. Though they are today considered "feral" horses, many of them plainly exhibit the characteristics of the wild Outer Banks horses descended from the spanish mustang stock that first arrived on these barrier islands as far back as the early 1500's. In fact, some of these horses carry the primitive markings of the most ancient of wild horse breeds and types
Tomorrow off to Swansboro
Hi Ken and Laurie, glad we finally caught up with all your blogs and wow what a great trip so far but would you please hurry up and get somewhere that we can visit ... just kidding ; ). Maybe not, how about the Turks? We're both excited that you're living the dream that you wanted and very jealous. No doubt all the work you've put into this trip will be well worth it once you begin to realize you've made it to paradise.
ReplyDeleteHugs, Dave and MaryAnne