We just finished a section of our history curriculum that covered The Wright Brothers, so we decided to take a couple of days and go camping in Kill Devil Hills and visit the Wright Brothers Memorial.
We listened to a presentation about the Wright Brothers and their airplane, which was cool because they have a full-sized, working replica of their plane, so they got to see it up close.
Next we went outside and got to fly a simple-to-make kite made from some dowels and a trash bag.
Everyone took a turn flying it.
Fortunately there was plenty of wind to keep it aloft.
There were some storms rolling in, so we had to put the kites away.
Then the kids got to walk the rail the Brothers used to launch their plane.
And they walked the length of each flight, which got successively longer.
Even though there was a storm coming, we hustled up the big dune and saw the memorial itself.
The inscription around the base reads, "In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Conceived in genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith."
A beautiful view from the top.
At this point, it looked like the storm had passed us by.
Rebecca spotted some pretty orange flowers on the walk down.
The kids got to pose with Orville before we left.
Not 10 seconds after I took this picture, the storm that we thought had passed us opened up on us with a vengeance. It poured rain, soaking us to the bone before we could get back to our car. Unfortunately, we had left the windows open on our tent, which was only 5 minutes away, so almost everything got soaked. We wound up spending lunch time at a laundromat drying our clothes, blankets, towels and sleeping bags.
