Having recently returned home from our annual vacation in North Carolina with friends, I wanted to write about one thing that Ann and I did that was far more exciting than I ever would have expected: a Wild Horse Tour in Corolla.
It began with our guide, Sam, giving us a little history on the type of horses- wild Corolla Spanish Mustang- that we would be seeing.After that Ann, myself and three other couples were shown to our seats in a 4X4 off-road vehicle, buckled ourselves in and then took off down the first stretch of beach seeking wild-horse sightings.
Seeing the beautiful water as Sam drove us along the beach to our first sighting area was a great way to get started, before he first slowed down to a crawl so that we could see these beautiful horses and we could observe, ask any questions we might’ve had or take a few pictures. Now, we never got out of the truck nor were we allowed to but Ann was psyched because she was able to get a bunch of nice pictures of these mellow but playful horses galloping after one another,or just grazing, minding their own business while barely acknowledging us.
For me, this outing was a great time, though I cringed a bit as Sam would turn almost completely around to tell us different things about the tour and the horses as he was driving around seeking Wild Horse sightings. Fortunately for us and Sam, he never hit anything or drove terribly fast. I’ll assume that he has been doing things that way for a while. Also, for anyone wondering, the opening sentence of this paragraph was never meant to be a knock against Sam, just an observation as to how this tour moved along.
Anyway,we tooled around for about an hour so photo opportunities were plentiful.Overall, we saw around four harems, which are groups containing 1 to 4 horses consisting of 1 dominant stallion and 1 to 4 mares. A mare is an adult female horse. We also learned that a wild horse feeds on sea oats, coarse grasses, acorns and native vegetation.
Even though our entire trip was fun, it was seeing those beautiful brown and white horses that, somehow, caught my eye and stuck with me.