It’s a crisp and beautiful morning and I’m excited for what lies ahead of me. I love animals and wildlife and I always have. As a 6 year old, my dad would let me catch grasshoppers in the fields at my sisters soccer games, and when I was 13 my best friend gave me what quickly became my favorite book for years, a giant encyclopedia of every animal on earth. So getting the chance to catch a glimpse of the wild Banker Mustangs that roam the beaches of North Carolina? Count me in. Read on and spend A Day in the Life with Wild Horse Adventure Tours.
(Don’t have time to read? Watch this short clip of my day)
At a Glance
A Tour Guides Take: Bouncy and fun, I recommend this tour for anyone tough enough to withstand the elements and willing to get jostled around a bit off-roading and looking for wild horses in a landscape that is breathtaking and surreal
Strengths: Great vehicles, polite staff, the gift shop offers a nice respite from the heat, the experience is unmatched
Weaknesses: The competing interests in the area mean you’re looking for wildlife among homes, albeit homes that you can only access by off-roading to, vehicle open to the elements can make for a not-so-pleasant day depending on your durability
WHO: Wild Horse Adventure Tours, wildhorsetours.com, @wildhorseadventuretours on Instagram
WHERE: Corolla, Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA
WHAT: Off-road wildlife spotting and sightseeing tour looking for the protected Banker Mustangs
(Coming to the Outer Banks? Check out the Worst Things to Do)
Booking
Wild Horse Adventure Tours has a fantastically easy website, or you can call their helpful staff to make a reservation. The price at time of writing is $65 per adult, with a discounted child rate. Be warned: they book up FAST in the summer, with availability for any given date closing as far out as two weeks in advance.
Don’t wait to book last second. However, if you do, try a weekend. The weekend-to-weekend nature of vacation rentals in the Outer Banks makes Saturday’s and Sunday’s less busy as most people are leaving or arriving. You’ve been warned.
Check-In
The office is located on the second floor of a small shopping center on the southwest corner of the first of two stoplights in town. You’ll see the tour vehicles parked out front, with signs outside directing you upstairs.
Once checked in, browse the store, grab a water bottle or fill up for free with their filtration system, and hangout in the air conditioning until tour time.
Equipment
Equipment: Modified H1 Hummers, rain panchos and blankets if needed
Wild Horse Adventure Tours uses modified H1 Hummers for their off-road tours. Behind the drivers seat are 3 rows of 4 seats, “stadium seating” as their website says, which are comfortable yet bare. Still, seeing how the other horse tour companies in the area have benches attached to truck beds, this is vastly superior.
There’s a tarp “roof” overhead shielding you from direct sun, but if you’re on an edge seat you can still get a good sunburn, and there’s little in the way of actual rain protection aside from the provided panchos.
Guides speak via microphones through speakers mounted behind the driver, and are surprisingly clear.
The Trip
Tours are two hours long and involve about ten minutes of driving on pavement before getting to the preserve with the wild horses. Crossing a cattle grate on the lone two-lane road into the preserve, we dump straight onto the beach – literally on the sand next to the ocean – where we head north through 7,000 acres looking for horses.
Many sections of the preserve are off-limits to both foot and vehicle traffic,leaving several thousand acres open for wildlife, including the horses. There are several bird species, foxes, raccoons, lizards, deer, the occasional passing snake, and salt-tolerant plants. Curiously, there’s also numerous persimmon trees and blackberry bushes scattered everywhere behind the dunes.
There is other traffic on the beach with us, but because driving on the beach is still considered driving on a state highway, road rules (sort of) apply, though I did see people driving every direction possible. Beachgoers can park on the sand in designated spots by permit only, and laws respecting the wild horses apply to everyone regardless.
You can only cross the dunes in designated places and, once over, we’re in a different landscape of homes, trees, bushes, and a few flooded areas perfect for the horses to get water.
Our guide talked about the history of the area and explained the “complicated relationship” between balancing wild horse and ecosystem protection with the rights of private property owners. Several thousand acres within the preserve are actually private property, with vacation rentals everywhere, and while this does give the horses more space to live free, it’s a little disappointing seeing them in driveways or next to someone’s pool. Still, manicured lawns provide excellent sources of grass as food for the horses.
We drove through most of the acreage available, seeing several horses in a couple different groups. Most of the horses were just grazing, but our guide did tell us stories about times he’s seen horses fighting, running, hanging out with newborn calves, and everybody’s favorite – mating. Yes, our guide has watched wild horse procreation on a tour before, and we had a good laugh hearing him tell us how he struggled to explain to the children on the trip what was going on. “Ask your parents”, he said, was his go-to advice.
We ended the trip driving south on the beach, and I enjoyed gazing out at the ocean, the waves rolling constantly. I wish we had seen horses on the beach, but our guide told us this isn’t an everyday occurrence. Wildlife has a life of it’s own.
Back on the pavement and we pass the 150 year-old Currituck Beach Lighthouse, our guide telling a few more jokes and stories. Pulling into the parking lot, we attempt the challenging climb out of the hummer, and the trip is over.
(Want to see more? Check out this full-length interview with members of the Wild Horse Adventure Tours team)
Post-Trip Thoughts: Wild Horse Adventure Tours
Part wildlife and adventure tour, part tour of newly built rental properties, this was a tough one for me.
On one side of the coin, it was disappointing to see these protected wild horses spending so much of their lives in what equates to a semi-developed neighborhood. Our guide did an excellent job though helping us understand the losing battle they’re fighting, trying to advocate for the horses well-being while co-existing with a relentless drive to develop vacation rentals.
On the other side of the coin, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and entertainment that Wild Horse Adventure Tours provided. Wild Horse Adventure Tours has struck gold with their combination of high-quality vehicles and guides. It’s clear to see why they’re the leading tour business in the area.
Off-roading down the beach, feeling every bump in the sand before gliding over huge sand dunes, I tune out some of the noise, the other cars, the vacation homes. I’m deleting every home in the background of the pictures in my mind. To me, there are no houses, there are no roads or developed areas. To me, there are just horses among the brackish backwater marshes. There are just horses cresting the dunes, like they did when they were brought here. There are just horses.
To me, taking a horse tour is like flipping a coin. Sometimes you get horses in driveways, in peoples carports, or standing in the middle of a dozen houses. But sometimes you get horses running, fighting, or napping on the beach.
I want to flip the coin, I really do. Maybe it’ll land on horses in a driveway. Or maybe it’ll land on me taking this tour over and over again. I think I’ll flip that coin.
