Down North Carolina’s Outer Banks

April 2022

We began our first trip to the Outer Banks by visiting the Wright Brothers Natl. Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, the site of the first machine-powered flight on Dec. 17, 1903. The date we visited marked one year since the day we began our full-time RV traveling.

There is a small museum in the visitor center which tells how the Wright brothers started their quest to fly, and how they solved problems of the principles of flight that had stumped many others.

Wilbur and Orville chose the Outer Banks for their test flights for 3 reasons: they would have wind for lift, sand for a soft landing, and isolation away from the public eye.

View of the town of Kill Devil Hills and the spot where the first flights took place (the takeoff point is the white marker next to the path and to the left of the gray buildings).

Big Kill Devil Hill, now covered in grass, was a huge hill of sand when the Wright brothers flew a glider from it in order to learn about the principles of lift and control.

The monument is hollow inside, but is closed to the public except on special occasions. Cool art deco doors!

A replica of the Flyer is on exhibit in the visitor center. The original is in the Smithsonian.

The stone on the left is the takeoff point for each of the 4 flights. The stone in the center is where the Flyer landed on the first try. The flights got progressively farther each time. The last flight landed much farther away and is not seen in this photo.

The stone marker for the landing point of the 4th flight can just be seen in front of the trees, past the people walking down the path. (There were no trees when the Wright Brothers made their flights.)

Our next stop was lunch at Goombay’s Grille. There are a lot of restaurants with alliterative names in the OBX, such as Awful Arthur’s, Barefoot Bernie’s, and Dirty Dick’s!

After lunch, we headed to Bodie Island Lighthouse (pronounced “body”). It is 164 feet tall and the light can be seen 19 miles away. It’s on the north end of Cape Hatteras Natl. Seashore, but it’s close to Nags Head. I thought this lighthouse was beautiful.

From there, we crossed over to Roanoke Island to our third Natl. Park site of the day: Fort Raleigh, the site of the lost colony. Here we looked at the exhibits about the first English colony begun in 1584, whose inhabitants all mysteriously disappeared. There is not much left to see at the site—just a few artifacts in the small visitor center’s exhibit. We didn’t take any pictures. The exhibit did get us wondering about the fate of the colonists.

Our last stop of the day was to Jockey’s Ridge State Park. We walked the short boardwalk to see the tallest sand dunes on the east coast. We did not climb the dunes, though, so we didn’t see the full extent of them. There is an access point farther down the highway, as well. There’s an interesting story about this park: In 1973, a resident living nearby saw a bulldozer getting ready to move dirt at the base of the dune in preparation for a housing development. The resident stood in front of the bulldozer and refused to move, forcing the bulldozer to stop work. Her actions set in motion a successful effort to preserve the dune.

On another day, we toured the north end of the OBX. Our first stop was Donutz on a Stick in the little town of Duck. We ordered donut sundaes—quite a different and yummy treat.

Then we drove farther north to the town of Corolla and Historic Corolla Park, where we walked around the Whalehead Club building. Unfortunately, there were no tours offered that day.

Currituck Lighthouse was just a short walk away across the park. We did not climb the lighthouse, though.

We found the towns of Duck and Corolla to be much quieter than the tourist towns of Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, which seemed to have surf shops and mini-golf courses on almost every block on the main drag.

The next day, we traveled for a couple hours down long, skinny Hatteras Island, to our campground in Hatteras Village. After getting settled in, we drove to Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
Some work was being done on the inside, so no climbing was permitted at that time.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the second-tallest brick lighthouse in the world at 198.5 feet. This was another of those moments when I could say, “I *finally* got to see this. I’ve wanted to see this for years.” That’s what our traveling has been about, really. Finally getting to see all the places we’ve wanted to see.

This post marks the original location of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. It’s a short post—it just looks bigger because of the angle of the camera. The light station has an interesting exhibit telling how this huge lighthouse was moved to an inland location, where it would be safe from erosion.

The next morning, we came back to sit at the beach near the lighthouse to watch people surfing. But first, we stopped at Orange Blossom Bakery to get an apple ugly. It was so big that we bought only one and shared it. This picture doesn’t show how thick it was. It’s basically a huge apple fritter, and it was yummy!