November 27th, 2006

This morning we stopped at the Outer Banks Welcome Center, it is here that they have a "Monument to a Century of Flight". They even buried a time capsule for people to to be opened in 2103 which will be the 200th anniversary of the Wright Bros. first flight. Which we thought that was pretty cool. We continued south and stopped at Wright Bros. National Memorial. We got there just as they had started to play a video about the first flight. It was extremely interesting. They mostly talked about the different experiments the Wright Bros. performed while making their 1902 Glider and 1903 Flyer. After the video we walked around and took in the exhibits, then went out and walked up the the granite monument that is on top of hill the brothers used to launch their gliders. They have planted grass all over the dunes that they used so that they wouldn't blow away over the years.

After there, we continued south into the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and went to the Balboa Island Lighthouse and the visitor center there. We propped the camera in the window of the Element and got our picture in front of the lighthouse. After Kristin got a stamp in her journal we drove across the road to the beach. You can drive your car out on the beach in certain areas on the Cape and this area was one of them. It was pretty sandy but we decided to try it. Kristin went up on top of a sand dune to film me while I drove along the waters edge. I didn't venture too far, cause they sand was really loose. On the way back I started to get stuck and had Kristin get in and drive while I pushed so that we didn't end up digging ourselves into the sand. We made it out fine, thanks to the trusty Element. I love the water and really liked the area, even Kristin liked the North Carolina coast, which is remarkable, because she isn't too fond of the beach.

After leaving Cape Hatteras we headed west to Roanoke Island. Roanoke Island is the first place that a child of English decent was born in the New World. We went to Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, which is also known as the site of The Lost Colony. It story of the colony is shrouded in mystery, because they have no idea what happened to the people at the colony, they seemed to just disappear. From The Lost Colony we continued west we are going to try and get a hotel tomorrow in Smithville where there seems to be some good deals. Kristin is going to start the MD piece.