Accidental Vacation Day 8

This morning we left Suffolk (the Virginia Beach area) and headed south to Morehead City.  On the way down we crossed over from Virginia to North Carolina.

We went out to Kill Devil Hills which is where the Wright brothers flew for the first time.

We listened to a talk about the Wright Brothers and it seems that while the Wright brothers flew first, the biggest contribution they made was the science and engineering behind wind design and flight control.  They invented a wind tunnel and tested over 200 different wing shapes to determine which gave the most lift and the least drag.  They also fine tuned propellers this way.  Secondly was their invention of wing warping which allowed a plane to control roll in addition to pitch and yaw which were controlled by elevators and a rudder.  Connecting the rudder to the wing warping mechanism allowed for truly controlled flight.  Really neat stuff.

The rail below the plane in the picture of their first flight above is the rail in front of the rock below (or a replica).  The rock is where the plane first lifted off and the 4 stone markers in the distance are the landing points for the 1st 4 flights.  Additionally they didn’t make any more flights that year after the 4 because the wind picked up and tossed the plane end over end breaking it into pieces.

The Wright brothers wrote to the Smithsonian institute to give them a list of locations with steady wind and lots of sand which is how they found Kill Devil Hills.  It was indeed windy the whole time we were there.

On the way out of town, we drive by the city of ManTeo which was cool.

and a nice sunset

We made it to our hotel in Morehead City and then went to Atlantic Beach and had dinner on the boardwalk which was really good.  Upon leaving the restaurant, we found some sea faring creatures that looked like they needed to be ridden.