We have come full circle and are back in North Carolina. We managed to drive though 17 states (counting North Carolina where we started) and are now settled at our hotel on the Outer Banks for the next four days for wedding festivities and family visiting. Our 4-year old granddaughter is the flower girl at her big cousin’s wedding on Friday and we were kindly invited to attend.

Being us, if we were to fly from BC to NC we would make a trip out of it so we came a month early and toured around many of the southern states we had never been to. As of now there are only 2 USA states we have not been in: Conneticutt and Rhode Island and 7 we have not found a geocache in because we had not begun the hobby when we drove through many of the north eastern ones on our way home from our cross-Canada drive in 2014. Who knows, we may figure out how to get them someday.

We left our hotel in Chesapeake, Virginia at 10. There is pretty much one divided highway that runs down the ever-narrowing spit of the Outer Banks so we had no side roads we could take. The traffic was not too bad even though the Outer Banks are an extremely popular vacation spot. It is not uncommon to pay $30-$45,000 to rent a big house to have the family here for a week’s holiday!

We crossed the Albermarle Canal as we reached the northern part of the Outer Banks. It was completed in 1859.

We stopped at Kitty Hawk at the Wright Brothers National Memorial before we drove down to Nags Head (about 10 minutes more driving) to locate the property that our son and his wife and our granddaughter and other family members are staying in for the week of the wedding.

Inside the Visitor’s Center there were very interesting displays of the four-year journey of Wilbur and Oroville Wright as they experimented and tested and refined their gliders and then the propulsion-powered glider that eventually proved heavier-than-air flight was possible.

They constantly adjusted ideas, studied birds, reworked theories and perfected their glider so it could be manouvered. But to have controlled flight you need an engine. Gasoline engine technology had recently advanced to where its use in airplaines was feasible. But they could not find one suitably light so they designed and built their own. They also designed and built a wind tunnel to use for testing theories and used the data to perfect the first effective airplane propellor, one of their most original and purely scientific achievements.

The first three flight distances were pretty close together. The fourth one (see marker at the end of the path by the trees) lasted 59 seconds and went 852 feet (almost 260 meters). It was not quite the length of an airliner, but plenty far enough to prove it was possible to fly.

With my gibbled joints I was unable to climb to the top of Big Kill Devil Hill to see the 60′ monument, but the road goes all around it so we drove that before we left the memorial.

On the far side of the memorial hill there is a set of bronze sculptures that commemorate the world-altering event – the airplane, the men and even the photographer.

The Outer Banks are a series of islands comprised of sand, sand and more sand. With lots of houses, restaurants, hotels, and beach activity shops. And wild horses; which we will go see tomorrow.

We arrived at the wedding venue and block of six-bungalows that family and close friends of the bride and groom are staying in for the week. Our son, his wife and daughter, mother-in-law, sister and brother-in-law, and brother-in-laws parents are in one house. The bride & groom and some other relatives and friends are in another. The grooms parents and siblings are in another, etc. We spent the afternoon visiting and were invited to stay for dinner. At 8 pm the parking lot between all the houses was turned into a silent disco party. The DJ provided headphones for participants that had three different channels you could switch to and listen to three different songs. You selected what you wanted and danced away with no noise to disturb the neighbours. You were invited to wear 70s appropriate clothing, which many of the guests did.

We left about 9 to drive 10 minutes up the road to our hotel and check in. We had to be up at 7 to be ready at 8:30 for Joseph and Carrie and Eloise to pick us up for our 10:30 am wild horse safari. The venue was about an hour away from Nags Head and you were requested to be there 20 minutes early.