Land Cruising

We're back in Chesapeake, VA after an uneventful flight on Sunday.  We rented a car at the airport because we needed groceries and are planning to go to downtown Norfolk tomorrow to see the sights.  We didn't have specific plans for today until Denise asked how far it was to Nags Head, NC.  As it turns out, it was a great question because we made the 75 mile drive this morning and had a great day in Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head on the NC Outer Banks and then drove to Elizabeth City, NC on our way back to Chesapeake.  We knew from our faint memories of elementary school history class that Kitty Hawk was where the Wright brothers flew for the first time.  I also knew from recent reading about the area that there is a monument there commerating this feat.  The experience was more than worth the trip.  We stopped first at the visitors center in Kitty Hawk and discovered another monument involving flying.

The monument documents all of the significant feats regarding flying, which are many.

I didn't know many of the actual dates, but at least knew of alot of the feats.

But not all of them.  I was amazed at this one.

 

32,000 years?  The year will be 33,972. 

Maybe I should have been paying closer attention to current events in 1972, but his is mind boggling to me.

The next thing we learned was that it wasn't really Kitty Hawk where the first flight occured, but a place 5 miles further south at Kill Devil Hills.

 

 We had never heard of Kill Devil Hills and certainly were interested in the origin of the name.  It dates to the colonial times when shipwrecks were common along the Outer Banks.  Many of these ships were carrying rum from the Caribean and when there was a wreck, the locals tried to salvage the cargo.  Often it was rum, which they would hide in the many sand dunes in the area.  It was said that the rum was strong enough to "kill the devil", so they called the dunes the Kill Devil Hills.

Denise and I both thoroughly enjoyed the visist to the Wright Brothers Monument, which is at the actual location of the first flights.  We watched a very informative 45 minute presentation given by one of the National Parks Service staff.  There are exact replicas of both the glider and the first powered plane that the Wright brothers flew here.  Their story is truly remarkable and the site is much more than just a monument to them.  Each of the first four successful flights, which all occurred on December 17, 1903, are physically documented.

The rock on the left marks the spot where each of the flights started and the rocks in the distance mark the distance and time of each flight.  The first was 120 feet and the last was the longest at 852 feet and lasted 59 seconds.  What is almost equally amazing to me is that the take off of the first flight was actually captured in a picture and this was because the brothers were also interested in photography and asked a local man, who had never even seen a camera before, to "squeeze the bulb" at the right moment.

 The monument itself sits atop a large dune on the site.

It was a long walk, but we made it and Denise took the opportunity to take a break,

and take in the view.

On the other side of the monument is a full scale replica of the first powered plane complete with bronze statues of each of the participants, including even the photographer.

And if you've been following all of my posts, you know what happens when Denise is around bronze statues.

On our drive back to Chesapeake we decided to take a 25 mile detour and go to Elizabeth City, NC.  We had read about it in the Waterway Guide and were interested in seeing it.  Its on the Dismal Swamp route of the ICW and strives to be very boater friendly with several free slips downtown.

We had dinner here and then proceeded up US 17 towards Chesapeake.  The highway runs parallel to the Dismal Swamp ICW route and we found a rest area that gave us a chance to see this historic canal up close.  It is the oldest operating canal in the US, dating to 1763 and George Washington supervised the digging of the first stages.

While it is obviously scenic, we talked to a couple on a sail boat who were tied to the free rest area dock and they said it was not usually the preferred route of power boaters because the entire distance of around 50 miles is a no wake zone.  So I'm glad we didn't go that way, but at least we got to see it.  We still have the rental car tomorrow and more land cruising is planned.