Corolla Wild Horse Tours
My husband surprised our family with a Corolla Wild Horse Tour! I’d wanted to go for a long time and we really needed a good family day out, so this was a fun surprise!
We opted for the two hour tour. You can find longer ones if you like. They warn you when you arrive to use the restroom because the ride will be “bumpy”. “Bumpy” might be an underestimate! This is not a tour for those with back problems or who are pregnant. I personally wouldn’t want to take a tiny human on this tour either, although it’s great for kids who can sit in booster seats. There were several times zipping around sand dunes that we were a bit launched and the seat belts were all that were keeping us in place. It was very much like a roller coaster ride and everyone had a blast! Even my daughter who usually isn’t a big fan of such rides absolutely loved it!
The road runs right into the beach and the beach basically becomes the highway. (Watch out for the stumps sticking out of the sand!) We were told there are around 800 homes in that area currently and they are busy building many more! Some people are trying to get a paved road up there but it would be a danger to the 100 or so wild horses that live there. So for now the “roads” are deep sand weaving up and down and around the dunes.
We drove around for a long time looking for the horses! They are Spanish Mustangs and they were hiding pretty well the day we went. We were beginning to wonder if we would even find them!
In the meantime we enjoyed zipping along the beach and throughout the dunes in the open air with the sea breeze and sunshine.
Finally we found a few in someone’s yard at the backside of a park. We couldn’t drive over there so we got out and walked. Two of the horses were hiding behind trees and a utility trailer where we couldn’t really see them but a third came out from behind the trees.
He was a cheeky fellow! It’s against the law to approach the horses or be within 50 feet of them. This fellow snuck up behind the homeowner who had no idea he was there because he was doing yard work with his back to him and had noise cancelling headphones on. Of course once he realized he was there he moved away and told the horse to move back. It was quite funny! Apparently the horse just wanted him to shake more persimmons out of the tree for him!
The homeowner was super nice! He came over to chat with our group and showed us a bunch of fulgurite he found on the beach. He even let people keep some!
While we were chatting some more horses arrived and decided to get into a tousle. We actually had to move back because one of them decided to jump the fence into the park where we were standing!
Apparently these guys can be rather like bison. When they fight, they have no awareness or care for their surroundings. The tour guide said he’s seen them run right into vehicles before!
After a nice visit and learning more about the horses we moved on to see if we could find some more. We found a few more in other people’s yards. Not exactly the beautiful “wild” backgrounds I was hoping for.
We never did find horses on the beach on this trip. Release your expectations of seeing amazing wild horses running and playing in the surf like you see in all the advertisements! After the eight or so horses we saw in yards we only saw about three more drinking water in the canal and hiding in the trees. I needed my 400mm lens to see them well.
Out of the hundred or so horses we only found about eleven of them in two hours.
Even so, we had an absolute blast and I’d love to go again and try to catch some on the beach some day.
Check out all the tire tracks on the beach in the pictures below! With that much traffic I don’t blame the horses for hiding elsewhere! Naturally there’s no food or drinkable water for them there either.
After the tour, the rain was just moving in and we ducked into Uncle Ike’s Sandbar & Grill for lunch. They had pretty tasty food and they’re in the same parking lot.
The horse tour is basically right across the street from the Currituck Beach Lighthouse which is always worth a visit!
The boys wanted to climb it again so up we went!
