Kitty Hawk

The Wright Memorial. Fathers of Flight. Definitely on the must-do list! So we drove to Kitty Hawk in coastal NC (yes, back to NC...but it's OK, it was a long ways from Chapel Hill!) for a day.

Bill pays homage.

Wilbur Wright. Only lived 45 years. But long enough to leave his mark.

Orville Wright. The younger brother, who got to stick around for 76 years, living long enough, in fact, to attend the memorial dedication.

Kids coming down from the 60 ft monument on the 90 ft Kill Devil Hill - yes, it IS steep and yes, you CAN build up good speed on the way down!

Busts of the boys at the monument.

We were both very impressed with the memorial - it was very nicely done. Simple, but pretty and elegant.

Looking down from the memorial, you can see the museum buildings and the city beyond.

Another fly guy...

One of the wonderful old photos on display. Here, Orville and Amelia Earheart (and some other sort of important guy?) attend the unveiling of the first flight marker. One large, and four smaller, markers stand in a flight line as testaments to the famous take-off and landing spots.

Billy walking the line.

Pictures marking a great event - and the passage of time. In the first, older (bottom) photo, you can see that the hill is still just a sand dune. Later, when the memorial was built, the hill was planted with grass, to stop the dune from shifting (as dunes do...).

A terrific sculpture (that was done as part of the First Flight Centennial Celebration in 2003) at the base of the hilltop stone memorial. It shows the 1903 flyer and launching rail.

With monument in background.

Bill interacts with the "interactive sculpture."

Inside the visitor center.

And there you have it - the lay of the land and...the landings.