This trip has been very intimidating. We’ve learned about Americans who have braved wilderness, invented lightbulbs, led battles, and conquered flight. And then there’s us. Just your average, run of the mill Americans who excel at vacations but haven’t achieved world peace or cured the common cold. Yet. Give us time — we’re only 50, so perhaps greatness lies ahead.
Speaking of greatness, the Wright brothers laid the foundation for our 50/50 trip. I don’t like to think of making this journey entirely on land. We visited the site of Orville and Wilbur’s experiments with flight. At the time in 1903, the place was called Kitty Hawk, but now it’s known by the equally strange name of Kill Devil Hills. More on North Carolina’s unique names later. First, let’s talk about the fly boys. The brothers moved to Kitty Hawk to attempt to fly. They flew gliders over the gentle slopes in the area until they mastered the techniques for maneuvering in flight. Next, they mounted a motor and set forth to launch the first motored flight. This model seems awfully rickety to me, but the real thing managed to stay aloft.
The ranger explained that each marker showed where the plane touched down after taking off from the same spot a few yards from where I took the photo.
The boys lived in the humble shed below, and sheltered their aircraft in the hanger to the left of the shed. Cozy. The marker atop this hill salutes the brothers and marks the sight of their more than one thousand glider launches.
This recreation of the first flight allows visitors to climb onboard the plane and pretend to soar. The real event was captured on film and is one of the world’s most viewed photographs. Apparently, the guy who took the photo had never taken one before, and was so overwhelmed by the sight of the aircraft taking flight that he nearly forgot to press the shutter!
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North Carolina was also the sight of the Lost Colony at Roanoke. This would’ve made a great reality television show. A shipload of English colonists landed in 1587 and attempted to survive in a hostile environment with limited supplies. Their captain left them to return to England to gather supplies, but when he returned 3 years later, the settlement was abandoned. No one knows for certain what happened, but historians believe that, before they met their doom, one of the women gave birth to the first English child born in North America, Virginia Dare.
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Now for a different bit of history. The lovely and very live-able town of New Bern is where the recipe for Pepsi Cola was invented.
Don’t tell the folks of New Bern, but I like Coke better. No matter, New Bern is a delightful place that one of the locals told us had been voted as one of the top five best places to live in the US. I’d give it a try, though I’d bring my own soda.
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Just off the coast of North Carolina are a long stretch of narrow sand bars known as the Outer Banks. These are one of North Carolina’s defining features, in addition to exceptional college basketball teams. Kitty Hawk is located on the Outer Banks, along with the resort town of Duck, where we spent Thanksgiving. So, yes, we had turkey in Duck. The Outer Banks are uniquely beautiful and in some places so narrow that you can see both the ocean and the bay from one spot, like the view from our hotel room balcony (trust me):
The weather was surprisingly warm, so we enjoyed a nice stroll along the ocean.
Houses in the area are built on stilts to guard against invading surf from hurricanes
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Ever wonder why the state’s nickname is the Tar Heels? Legend has it that, during the Civil War, pine tar was put on the heels of the Confederate soldiers so they would stay and fight. Now there’s a pleasant thought. We traveled along highways 158, 64, 17, and interstate 95 and were tempted to stop and buy some of the collard greens for sale along the road. We also passed fields of cotton. We did stop in the town of Calabash, which is famous for its fried seafood. About 30 restaurants line a one-mile stretch of road, so we had no problems finding a place to sample fried fish, shrimp, oysters, and clams.
North Carolina wins the prize for the best town names in the country — hands down. Here is just a sampling of the towns actually found in the state:
Duck
Waves
Whale Bone
Waterlily
Bertha
Old Trap
Scuppernong
Acre
Nebraska
Surf City
Bug Hill
And my personal favorite,
Spot
I can hardly wait to return to that Spot in North Carolina….
20. North Carolina
Wright Brothers Memorial