Day 20

G3 and I woke up early to watch the sunrise over the ocean. I love watching sunsets, but I enjoy sunrises even more. There is something peaceful about seeing the sun—a blazing pinkish red ball—climb into the sky. The beach was quiet this morning with only a few other people awake to see the sunrise.

We took a walk down the beach. The early morning and early evening are my favorite times to be on the beach. I like it best when there are few—or no—people and the sun isn’t oppressive. Parts of the beach were blanketed with seaweed. Lots and lots of seaweed. We also saw a few small red jellyfish.

We walked until the beach was blocked off, closed to people because it’s where sea turtles nest. When we got back to the campsite we grabbed the combat sticks and practiced sparring. A week from today G3 has a tournament. After camp an an extended road trip, he might be a bit rusty.

G3 has been wanting to visit Kitty Hawk for years. He saw the Wright Brothers’ first airplane in the Smithsonian Museum in DC. He visited their house in Dearborn Michigan. And today, we finally got him to Kitty Hawk so he could see where they first took flight. When we got here we joined up with a Ranger talk. The Ranger was phenomenal. She was so passionate and enthusiastic about the Wright Brothers that her talk was one of the best we’ve experienced.

Wilbur and Orville were very much influenced by their mother. At a time when few women were educated, she had gone to college. She often fiddled with and fixed things in the home. She also made toys for her children to play with. Watching her, the brothers developed their own interest in tinkering.

When the brothers grew up, they first opened a print shop. However, when the bike craze reached America they opened a bike shop. They fixed, built, and designed bicycles. But Wilbur’s passion from a young age had always been flight. The brothers used what they learned from designing bikes to develop first a glider and then a flier.

In order to fly there were four problems that needed to be solved: lift, control, power, and thrust. Initially, the brothers built their first kites and gliders at home in Dayton, Ohio. They also conducted their first experiments at home, but they eventually needed to find a windy area to further their experiments. To find the perfect place, they contacted the weather bureau and asked for a list of windy places. Kitty Hawk was sixth on the list, but they chose it because it satisfied two other criteria. It was sandy which would make landing—or crashing—less painful. It was also isolated. At the time it was only a small fishing village and there were no bridges. The isolation would ensure that no one would steal their work and ideas.

They first visited Kitty Hawk in the summer of 1901. The mosquitoes were awful and they had little success. Wilbur retuned home dejected and ready to give up. His sister wouldn’t let him quit. She encouraged him to attend a conference on flight where he realized he knew far more than college educated engineers. He also realized much of the known data on flight was incorrect.

Rejuvenated, the brothers conducted more experiments and the new data enabled them to design a new glider, one with a rudder. This allowed them better control. They took it to Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1902.

Their success with the glider prompted them to ask Charlie Taylor, the bike mechanic who worked at their bike shop, to build an engine. He succeeded in making one that had 12 horsepower.

While he worked on the engine, the brothers made the propellers.

By the fall of 1903, they were ready to test their first flier. On December 14, Wilbur made the first attempt at flight. He did not succeed. He crashed the flier and caused damage. It took there days to fix it. But on December 17, a cold and windy day, they were ready to try again. Orville went first and became the first person to fly. They took turns and had a total of four flights, each one going a little further than the last:

1 — 12 second 120 feet

2 — 12 seconds 185 feet

3 — 15 seconds 200 feet

4 — 59 seconds 852 feet

One stone marker indicates where all the flights took off. There is also a stone marker to show where each one touched down so tourists can see the difference in distance.

After the fourth flight, wind flipped and damaged the flier. But by then they had proven flight was possible. Persistence paid off. Wilbur achieved his lifelong dream. They applied for a patent in 1903 and got it in 1906. They also applied for and received several European patents.

Unfortunately, Wilbur died in 1912 and did not get to enjoy much fame for his achievement. His brother, in contrast, lived long enough to see his invention turned into a weapon of war. Eleven years after the first flight, airplanes were used in WWI. Orville died three years after planes were used to drop nuclear bombs on Japan.

A piece of the original flier accompanied Neil Armstrong to the moon. Another piece was carried by Little Ingenuity to Mars. And where it landed was called Wright Field. The Wright Brothers’ spirit lives on in all types of flight and innovation.

A monument to the brothers stands on what was once a sand dune—a dune they climbed numerous times carrying their glider. In 1902, the field was sand. Today, it is grassy. Grass was planted in 1929 in an attempt to better preserve the area. G3 impressed the Ranger with his interest, knowledge, and the questions he asked.

After Kitty Hawk, we traveled back in time to 1584 and the Lost Colony of Roanoke. The Ranger talk there wasn’t as good. The Ranger tried too hard to involve everyone in the talk that the facts got all muddled. If I didn’t already know the story, I would have been confused. He also talked too much about perspective—Native V. British. It’s like he was afraid to come out and say the English were in the wrong. They were the invaders. The Native Americans were protecting what was there’s and trying to survive. But we are still in the south and they are a bit more touchy about calling out white people for historical wrongs.

What I did learn was that when the natives started to die from European disease, they asked the English to stop shooting them with invisible bullets. The death rate was so high, 25 percent of the native population was wiped out in two weeks. This is what sparked the animosity between Natives and English. Even though the Natives moved to the other end of the Island, they still died.

What happened to the settlers of Roanoke Colony? There are three theories, all of which are based on Native testimony. 1) The settlers moved to the Chesapeake area where they were massacred by Native Americans. 2) They moved west and were killed in Native American skirmish. Some may have become slaves. 3) They moved to Cape Hatteras and they intermarried with the Native Americans there. This is based on alleged evidence that 110 years later the Natives had brown hair and grey eyes that only could have come from British DNA. They were also able to read.

There isn’t much to see at the site of the lost colony, just a reconstructed Earthworks. It’s not terribly exciting, still it was fun to be there, to stand where the Colony once was.

What I didn’t know is that in 1862 a Civil War Battle was fought on Roanoke Island. The Union won making the Island a safe haven for enslaved people. Once they reached the Island, they were free. They set up there own colony and they learned how to read and write. Sadly, five years later, white people put them on boats and sent them to the mainland. They had few resources, and when I asked what happened to them, the ranger couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. As it was, she was reluctant to tell me why the Colony was disbanded. She hemmed and hawed before saying that President Johnson was not as idealistic as his predecessor. Then, she added that the property belonged to a man who had remained loyal to the union and he wanted it back. She said he deserved to be able to keep his land. It seems to me the former enslaved were entitled to more, but I realized it was best not to argue or debate.

And this concludes my historical ramblings this summer. We have no more scheduled history stops on our itinerary.

We wanted to spend the afternoon at the beach but the trick was finding a beach that wasn’t swarming with jellyfish. We drove to the Southern tip of Pea Island hoping to move away from them. But we failed. We still saw them on the sand, but there weren’t as many. We decided to give it a try and swim anyway. G3 was getting restless and wanted to get in the water. The waves were fantastic—rough and relentless. There was hardly a break between them. We all got knocked around. G3’s bathing suit was ripped off, not once, but twice, by the waves. Luckily, he was able to grab hold of it so he could put it back on. Other than nearly losing his clothes, he had a great time on the boogie board—until he got stung under his arm. It wasn’t a bad sting, but it still hurt.

Our fun ended, we got out of the water to watch the baby seagulls. The are so cute running into the water on their tiny legs as they search for food and then turning around to run out of the water before a wave can catch them. If a wave nails them in the tushy they jump up and fly a few inches before landing and running. As the water recedes, they rush in again chasing down more food.

We walked over to the beach in the dark. It was lovely. The wind had picked up so it was chilly but not cold. It’s actually comfortable in a sweatshirt. The moon hovering over the ocean is pretty and the stars are bright. I can hear the waves and the cicadas. I am in heaven. So happy and peaceful. I do not want to leave. I don’t want to go back to Jersey and life that continuously disappoints.