The NPS Assateague Island Visitor Center on the mainland (11800 Marsh View Ln), just before the Verrazano Bridge — exhibits, an aquarium touch-tank, restrooms, and your last stop before the island.
Welcome to Assateague Island — and welcome aboard. I'm Ranger Quinn, and I'll be riding with you the whole way, keeping you pointed right and telling you what you're seeing. Riding along too is Ranger Boone Merrick, who's got a saddlebag full of tales about this island — the ponies, a ghost city, and a few shipwrecks besides.
You're at the Assateague Island Visitor Center, still on the mainland, on the near side of the water. It's worth a few minutes before you drive over — there's a touch-tank aquarium, a room of exhibits, and clean restrooms, which are scarce once you cross. When you're set, pull out and follow the road south; in a moment it lifts up onto the Verrazano Bridge and carries you over Sinepuxent Bay onto the island itself.
One thing to know before your tires touch that sand: this island is home to wild horses, and they wander everywhere — the road, the campground, the beach. They are genuinely wild, they bite and kick, and the law says stay at least forty feet back — about a bus length. We'll talk more about them, but plant that number now: forty feet.
When you turn off the car, the tour pauses — just tap play on your phone to pick up where you left off. All right — when you're set, follow the lot exit out to the main road, Route 611, and turn toward the bridge; you'll see the long low causeway running out across the water ahead of you — take it, and it'll carry you straight onto the island. And once you're across and onto the sand, Boone will be waiting with the first tale — so let's get you over the water.
Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
.jpg){kind=link}