Today marked the end of our eastward trek, and the turning our feet (car tires) westward – toward home.  Reluctantly?  No.  Eagerly?  No.  As we did I remembered my reaction to The Hobbit.  They had all those adventures getting there, adventures in the cave with Smaug, and then they went home.  Really? That’s it? They just went home? No adventures on the way back?  But I digress.

It’s a little hard to think “We’re heading home.” when you’re crossing Roanoke Island.  You’re still in North Carolina. And even at the end of the day we’re only as far as Knoxville – just barely into Tennessee.  So rather than an attitude of “homeward”, we’re looking to new adventures along the way.

So today we left Virginia Beach and headed (along with about a half-million of our closest friends – it is Saturday, after all) to the outer banks, and specifically to Kitty Hawk.  On the one hand, there’s not a lot to see there. (The Wright brothers have gone home.) However we did take in a great ranger talk that went in to good depth about the birth of powered human flight.

From there we headed the couple of blocks to the beach

By way of full disclosure, flying the kite was much more successful on the Pacific coast than on the Atlantic coast.  Even though Kitty Hawk is the 7th windiest town in America (The Wright brothers checked.  They actually asked the national weather service for the list.  It’s amazing to me that you could get that information before the internet.  Anyway, Kitty Hawk was the windiest place in the continental US that wasn’t a major city.) …so even though Kitty Hawk is the 7th windiest town in America, the sand dunes that back the beach effectively block the wind. So that’s the highest I was able to get the kite.  The local sunning herself next to us was highly amused.  She told us of a place we could go to get the good wind. We thanked her and headed for home.

And arrived at Knoxville.

Tomorrow, Memphis.

Cheers