Leslie and David's Wanderings: 22 October 2022 First Flight and Light Houses

The RV Park is just down the road from the Wright Brothers National Memorial. On Dec. 17 1903, the Wright brothers flew the first controlled heavier than air flights in the world. Other inventors had flown powered flights but they could not control the aircraft and they all crashed. The Wright brothers had traveled to Kill Devil Hills for a period of time for four years testing their kites, then gliders, and then finally the first powered aircraft. In 1902, they built a glider and flew over 1000 glider flights from the top of Kill Devil Hill. During the glider flights, they learned how to control the aircraft and becoming the first pilots. When they flew in 1903, they had trouble getting comfortable with the revised elevator they had built into the Wright Flyer to help compensate for the additional weight of the engine and propellers. The result is that all four flights thar day ended because they induced oscillations which caused the aircraft to stall. We arrived at the National Memorial just in time to catch a Ranger led tour. After the ranger talk, we walked the Flight path and stopped at each of the landing sites. After the last flight, the flyer was damaged by a hard landing. The damage was going to take two days to repair, but that night a strong wind flipped the flyer and damaged it beyond repair. We then toured the museum before driving over to Kill Devil Hill and climbing up to the top where the Wright Brothers Memorial Monolith is located.

After the national memorial, we continued north along the island to the small town of Corolla. We stopped at the Currituck Beach Light House built in 1875. They want $12 a person for the privilege of climbing the 220 steps to the top. We passed. But we were able to pick up information on the other four light houses on the Outer Banks that we would like to visit. We then drove north to the end of the road where it drops you on to the beach. We turned around since we did not want to take a chance on getting stuck in the sand with the tide coming in. But we made reservations for later in the week to take a tour that would take us further up the island to see the wild mustangs.