Beach Trip 2016 - Part 1 - The Wright Brothers Memorial

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.

Windy Days of Fall

We had a stretch of very windy days about 2 weeks ago. The kids kept asking to go fly their kites. We were never in a good place to go. You know, life just is busy sometimes. Late one afternoon we decided to just go do it. We put off dinner an hour or so and went to a nearby field. Don't you know that when we got there, the wind had died down considerably. Boo. Lesson learned: keep your kites in the car and just stop when the wind is blowing. Don't wait or you might miss your wind. We did run back and forth across the field and were able to still have some fun. Emma and Jeremy actually had the most success. The kids still had fun and they were quite tired from running back and forth. Where is Ezra you ask? Well, he didn't think much of running back and forth with the kites. Too much work for him. He preferred to talk about them and give directions to his siblings. :) And the kites are now in the back of the van for a while. We promised the kids to just stop and enjoy the next windy "moment" that presents itself.  

Let's Go Fly A Kite!

Last year, Olivia and I tried about 30 times to go out across the street and fly a kite, but the wind was never consistent enough to get it in the air, let alone keep it there. Eventually, winter rolled around and we gave up. Last weekend, though, was beautiful and windy, so we tried again and this time were very successful! The wind was blowing hard and kept the kite high in the air. Olivia had a great time doing it, even though we got caught in the trees twice.

 
We Also got out a "Boomer-ring" that we got at the circus. it was supposed to fly out and come back, but with the wind, it never quite did that. Olivia got quite good at chasing it down and throwing it at me, though. :)