January 3-Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

The town of Kitty Hawk, and the Wright Brothers National Memorial, are on Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina. It was a sunny, 65 degrees today and so we left our fleeces in favor of short sleeves! Cape Hatteras stretches north to south across three long, narrow islands off the coast, and shelters the mainland of NC creating offshore sounds. The Cape has a road or two down the center. There are lots of hotels and tourist spots, and houses built up on stilts so that the water can flow under them in a storm. It looks like an absolutely wonderful place to explore but we are running out of time and need to head to Florida to meet Laura and Hank. We spent today at the sight of thousands of glider test flights by the Wright brothers over a four year period. We have seen their bicycle shop and Huffman Field where they learned to steer their planes in Dayton, Ohio...we have seen the actual planes in the Smithsonian...and today we saw where the first powered flight took place (on December 17, 1903). Gene is thrilled, and I'll admit all these spots were pretty interesting! We both thought that they flew on the beach, but actually their flight path was right down the center of the island, in a spot that was all sandy and had steady winds of 25-30 miles an hour (thats what they needed for success). They flew into the wind for lift. On Dec 17th they took 4 flights. The first flight was 12 seconds long and went 120 feet (Gene likes to say that they could have flown inside a 747). The second and third flights were about the same. The final flight of the day was 59 seconds and went 852 feet. They took turns flying so Orville did flights 1 and 3. Wilbur flew the 2nd and 4th. I'll post a picture where you can see how far they flew...they took off at the big rock and flew to the 4 monuments--one is way in the distance. Elsie begged for a beach so we walked up and down the nearest one. It was beautiful as the sun went down over the land and the moon rose over the ocean. So odd not to have the sun setting over the ocean! Still haven't gotten used to being on the East coast! If you look closely in one of the photos you can see Elsie's dark head with a wave crashing over it. I guess she didn't see it coming in the dark. Tomorrow we are going to start a long drive down to Florida. The kids fly into Ft. Lauderdale on the 12th. We're very excited to have company to explore the Florida Keys. We'll be parked in Marathon, half way down the Keys. The next few days will be lots of driving!