Saturday, July 24, 2010

Taking Flight on the Outer Banks: The Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills, NC







































Kill Devil Hills, NC

It was just about Sydney’s age that I began the wonderful pilgrimage every month via good ole Eastern airlines from Hanover, NH to my dad’s new home in New Jersey.  A four-year old flying solo?  Terrifying you say?  Oh no, it was the 70’s and I got first class treatment without the regs.  Tours of the cockpit on every flight.  Super, attentive flight attendants who who’d rarely met a kid of divorce.  I fell in love with planes. I was determined to get my pilots license by fourteen.


The boys have flown a lot.  Check out their recent jaunt to Rome or their semi-annual pilgrimages to Miami. I had hoped Sydney might catch the bug.  What better place to go viral than Kitty Hawk.  I tried with my poor physics skills (a D on my first test in high school = no more physics, ever, not MC squared) to explain how they created flight.  The museum does a decent job, for rocket scientists.  We spent a long time reenacting the first, second, third and fourth flights as he ran the distance between the markers.


The highlight of the day was by far the park ranger program.  Every park we go to they get more and more kid-friendly these days.  This one was kite flying, no joke!  And voila, Sydney asked all the right questions about flight.  Even Liji was able to figure out how to put a man on the moon that day.  Perhaps my boys will fare better in physics than either I did or those crazy Wright Brothers.

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