looking for ponies

As promised, the shells were nothing less than amazing... it would be easy to spend hours sorting thru them all. We did get some pretty neat ones, but honestly, I was more on a hunt for ponies than I was for shells.

The island is long and low in shape, and the wind whistled across it. When the rain came, it almost pelted you... I have to say, everyone was a very good sport to be out here doing this!!! Poor Mandi, she had worn sandels and one of them broke!!! so, she was walking almost "shoeless"... she is also four months pregenat to boot, and she hiked along like a trooper, looking for shells and keeping watch for ponies.

Now, I figured these ponies were pretty smart, they have lived thru many a rainy day out here, so, we began to check in the brushes for them. Nate and Patrick were happy to scale the top of the sand dunes to see if they could find them, but I sort of felt that they (being much smarter than us) were pretty much under cover and out of the rain!!! We searched and searched, found many fairly fresh hoofprints, and lots of really fresh horse poop.... but NO ponies. Finally, it was getting close to the time to meet the boat, and we (ME) felt pretty discouraged not having seen any.

As we met up with the boat, our captain said.. "well how many ponies did you find?"... we answered.. "none"... "really?, he replied.."well there are two just down the beach, I will drive you out past them".

Nate spoke up, and asked if he could run down the beach and snap a couple of pictures for us... I wanted to go too, but he would only allow Nate to go.

So, as we boated along the shore, Nate ran down the beach on foot and was able to snap these wonderful photos of these two island ponies!!! Being brought up on a farm and used to "large animals"... Nate wasn't one bit afraid to walk up fairly close to them.

This made our captain a little bit nervous.. he told us that if these two were mares, than the stallion wasn't far away, and might even show up and chase Nate off. No more were those words out of his mouth, when one of these ponies actually charged at Nate!!! But, Nate is quick and understands horses, so he ran just "out of zone" and the ponies went back to their grazing.

We could see them quite well from the boat, but I would have loved to be up on the shore with Nate... either way, we can say that we got to see them, and I am grateful that Nate was able to get such good pictures of them. I would have loved for it to be a sunny day, and I would have loved to spend a lot more time out there, but we did what we could and the day will always be a special memory!!! who knows, another time may come and we can do this again. But, if anyone gets the chance to visit Beaufort... this is an adventure you won't want to miss....

And even though I look like a "drown rat"... I think my smile tells the rest of the story.... it was well worth it....



believe me though... that hot shower I took back at the hotel felt pretty great!!! OH... the sun broke out just about supper time.........