The Wright Brothers Museum and Memorial

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT - A.) the actual flight markers for the famous flight. The stones mark the distances of each leg. They had a larger stone there to depict where the flyer initially took off, but I couldn't get a photo of the actual track. B.) A model replica of the flight. You can see the track and all three stone markers where the flyer took off and landed, finalizing the 12 second flight at the 3rd and last stone. C.) replica of the motorized Wright Flyer from a rear angle. D.) The reason we couldn't get to see the Wright Brothers Monument)


Being a bit into historical things, I couldn't resist the temptation to travel back north from our beach house in Avon, NC, to Kitty Hawk, NC, the home of the Wright Brothers and their amazing motorized 13 second flight. It was a pretty cool day trip. The museum, as you might have assumed, had an incredible amount of cool information on the Wright Brothers, the Wright Flyer, and actual flight, and where and how they assembled and flew the flyer. It was a pretty cool day trip. There was an amazing memorial statue up top of a hill (Upper Left). We didn't visit up there because our son was hungry and screaming at the top of his lungs...so we aborted our mission up the hill to feed the child, then had to head back to Avon for dinner. So that was my one disappointing part of the trip. Apparently, if you're flying above the monument, it appears as a star with the point of the monument pointing upwards towards the sky. Its supposed to be pretty cool, but, as I said, we didn't make it up there. Also, as the original Wright Flyer is at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., there were only replicas of the infamous flyer at this museum (one Lower Left). Still an amazing spectacle. They did, however, display the original buildings that the Wright Brothers lived in while they were building the flyer (Lower Right, building on the right) and the hanger where the flyer was assembled (Lower Right, building on the left). Just outside of these structures, the museum retained the original track that was laid for the flyer to begin its historic, though short, flight. The flyer took off from this track initially, landed became airborn again after a few feet of rolling on the ground, then lifted off for a very brief third leg. The flyer went about 120ft in distance, and was in the air for about 12 seconds total (the sum of all three airborn legs of the flight). The Wright Flyer was destroyed after the final landing. The actual flight took place in Kill Devil Hills, NC, which is a town just south of Kitty Hawk, NC. (They're pretty much one entity now, but I suppose the city centers are about 5-8 miles apart.) The Wright Brothers then went on to Dayton, OH, to complete the Wright Flyer II and their future experiments. Pretty amazing stuff. If you're ever in the area you should check it out. Its a good day trip.