North Carolina - Day 14 - Kitty Hawk, Rodanthe

Pierce RV Park, Williamston

Saturday, 15 July 2023

On our 2nd walk this morning, Dext and I followed a wild turkey for about half the distance we walked.  The edge of the campground is bounded by a long line of thick trees, and the turkey came out of the trees ahead of us and started walking in the same direction we were.  I'm pretty sure it knew we were there but didn't seem concerned, except to keep an eye on us.  I held us back a bit to keep from spooking it, and onward we all walked for maybe 10 minutes.  It was pretty neat.

We got on the road at 7:40, aiming for the Wright Brothers Memorial (again) as well as the town of Rodanthe, farther down the Outer Banks.

today's route

We passed lots of crops, lots of farmhouses.  Lots of curves in the road.  But no street signs, so I was having to take the route in Google on faith, which in my case is limited.  But we did get to the right place in the end.

We came to a town called Coinjock (really), and I've learned that name came from a Native American word meaning "the place of blueberry swamps."  Sounds like a nice place just based on the name.

At Jarvisburg we passed the Historic Jarvisburg Colored School.  It comes by the "historic" designation honestly, having been established in 1868.  It's on the National Historic Register as representative of the "colored schools" in segregated Currituck County, NC.  It's now a museum to help educate people who didn't live through the segregation era.  And I stopped in town for gas when I found it for $3.15/gallon.

It wasn't much farther to the town of Kitty Hawk, and then a little farther to Kill Devil Hills, "Birthplace of Modern Aviation," they say.  .

And speaking of names, the town of Kill Devil Hills doesn't seem to know where their name came from but suggests at least 4 options.  Here's a link.   https://www.outerbanksvacations.com/name-kill-devil-hills  My favorite involved trapping the Devil in the sand dunes.  

Of course I was here to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial.

At the memorial, my federal senior pass once again got me in for free.  (And considering how many of us live on fixed incomes, I'd say any senior who doesn't get one of those cards and use it as much as they can is missing a serious bet.  It almost makes up for the common indignities of old age.)

Driving into the site, I passed a lot of very large kites, some in the air.  It looked like it might be a club - and surely a lot of fun.

The memorial protects the actual hill the Wright brothers used in their first flights in 1903.  Here's what they did and why they're celebrated, according to the National Park Service brochure:

"For the first time, a manned, heavier-than-air machine left the ground by its own power, moved forward under control without losing speed, and landed on a point as high as that from which it started.  Within the next 2 generations, people flew for routine travel, heard an aircraft break the sound barrier, and watched a man walk on the moon."

Kill Devil Hill (the hill, not the town) is a 90' sand dune, not an earthen hill.  Grass has been planted on the dune to keep it from the inevitable fate of sand dunes by the ocean.  At the top of the hill is a 60' monument.

This is the hill the Wrights and their helpers trudged up over and over,
carrying their 605-pound airplane.

The 60' monument at the top of the sand dune.

The day was already getting warm, and I decided the hill was just too tall for Dext and me to walk up.  But we did walk around the grounds a bit and found the nearby life-sized sculpture of the historic first successful flight:

From this angle you can see the onlookers at the side,
with Wilbur Wright urging his brother on.

This angle includes the photographer who recorded the event, and gives a clearer view of
the airplane.  Orville Wright is barely visible, lying in the center of the lower wing.

The flyer in the sculpture weighs 10,000 pounds (unlike the Wrights' flyer at 605 pounds).

The main reason I came here was, once again, to honor my sister.  After she died in a skydiving accident, my parents donated her body to Duke Medical School.  A year later, they returned Louise's ashes to my parents.  Daddy and I drove from Texas to North Carolina, Daddy chartered a plane from the company Louise had been flying with, and he and I scattered her ashes at this memorial from the air.  That was in 1974 and I feel sure we wouldn't be allowed to do it today.  But it seemed fitting.  Fifty years later, I still miss her.  Grief is an odd thing.

Back on the road, we passed deep sand dunes and old fashioned houses and the town of Nags Head.  Nobody seems to know for sure where the town's name came from, though there are multiple competing local legends to explain it.  Your guess is probably as good as anybody else's.

Continuing south on the Outer Banks from there, we came to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, established in 1937 to protect its history (shipwrecks, lighthouses and the US LIfesaving Service), its variety of habitats (e.g. shorebirds and sea turtles nest there), and its importance as winter habitat for migrating waterfowl.

A 3-mile-long bridge took me to the separate Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.  It too was established in 1937, 3 months before the next door Cape Hatteras National Seashore, in order to protect year-round habitat for a wide variety of birds.  I was interested to note that the US Fish & Wildlife Service manages this refuge, while the National Park Service manages Cape Hatteras National Seashore (in conjunction with the Wright Brothers' Memorial and the farther inland Roanoke Island colony historical site).  Shows the difference in focus/purpose of the various sites.

I passed another terse historical marker on Pea Island titled "Pea Island Lifesavers."  It said that from 1880 to 1900, a US Lifesaving Station operated here, and it was the only one that was staffed with a Black crew.  North Carolina isn't very chatty with its historical markers.  There were sand dunes on both sides of the road and a little residential growth, though only on the side of the road away from the ocean.

From Pea Island another 3-mile bridge (I clocked them both) took me to the seashore town of Rodanthe.  This town is known as suffering the highest rate of erosion on the Outer Banks, and I saw videos on the news of entire houses being knocked down by the encroaching ocean tide.  People have built their dream retirement homes on the beach, only to find now that climate change is eroding the beaches and increasing tidal action in the ocean.  Some of them were moving their entire houses as far from the water as their property extended, spending the money that cost in hopes that they can buy more time to figure out a solution.  I found an article that explains the problem is by no means entirely the fault of the homeowners being shortsighted.   https://coastalreview.org/rodanthes-doomed-houses-myriad-problems

I wasn't actually able to get close enough to the beach to see any of this, instead passing a few housing areas that looked like pretty ordinary housing areas.  I stopped at the Rodanthe Beach Access, only to discover that it wasn't quite the situation I've found at beach access areas in other states.  This one was a small parking area by the road, and a long path/road that led to sand dunes and, presumably, the ocean.  It was a hot day, the road was rough, it was a quarter mile long, and I wasn't convinced we'd be glad we made the trek.

Instead, Dext and I walked around the parking area and discovered a tiny hidden graveyard.

All the stones were old and one marked an 1832 grave.

As we drove back toward the mainland, I noticed that the sand dunes were white but the beach sand was yellow, the color of Texas beaches.  Unexpected.

I went back across both those 3-mile bridges to US-64.  And I just want to note that I'm finally getting used to driving on bridges.  Maybe 5½ years late, but better late than never, right?

US-64 is the highway I was on yesterday in that accident-caused traffic jam, and at this end it crosses Roanoke Sound and Roanoke Island.  A sign there said "Birthplace of America's First Child."  Of course, that just means she was the first child born to European parents (ignoring the many generations of children born to Native Americans).  This girl was Virginia Dare, she was born in 1587, and she was named in honor of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I.  This was the site of Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated first colony.

Then to the town of Manteo (as in "Manteo to Murphy") and another very long bridge - 2.7 miles per Wikipedia.  While I was still on the bridge, we got an extremely heavy rainfall, which was a little disorienting.

That brought us to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1984 to protect some unique wetlands habitat that is home to such wildlife as black bears, red wolves and a wide variety of bird species.  And I passed a sign saying "Endangered Red Wolf Crossing Next 12 Miles - Drive With Caution."  Counterintuitively, it's also the location of the Dare County Bombing Range.  It's managed by US Fish & Wildlife concurrently with Pea Island.

A short distance down the road I crossed another long bridge - this one a drawbridge - and then a sign for the state's Palmetto-Peartree Preserve.  This area was set aside, at least in part, to protect habitat for the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  However, it's been in charge of the NC Dept. of Transportation, which hasn't had the funding or the interest in protecting the area.  Five years ago, ownership was transferred to the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, and the local hope was that this neglected area would be revived.  Sounds like a good place to visit sometime soon.

You can tell that this whole area of North Carolina is being protected one way or another for various living beings - including the water (which seems alive to me).

Then the town of Columbia again, where we'd been yesterday, and the Scuppernong River.  Farther along the road, we came to the town of Plymouth, "A World Center for Wood Products," they say.  I'm not quite sure of the basis for this claim, but I did learn that the wood mill founded in Plymouth in 1937 has been bought by Weyerhaeuser which, of course, has an extensive reach.  And I learned that this plant ships wood pulp to 21 countries around the world and is now a major producer of a product called "softwood fluff pulp."  It has extremely absorbent qualities and is used in adult incontinence products, baby diapers and other such needed products.  And all this in a town of 3,300 folks.  (You could probably use that phrase "softwood fluff pulp" to see if the guests at your next party are safe to drive home.)

Plymouth, like Elizabeth City yesterday, says it is a Bird Sanctuary.

I saw several big Trump flags.

Then back to Williamston, another Bird Sanctuary, according to their sign.  I stopped for groceries and we were back in that strange campground-cum-trailer park by 3:00.

In the evening, the drizzle we'd had for much of the afternoon changed to heavy rain and thunderstorms, upsetting Dexter.

Compared to yesterday, my body was doing much better today.  It's still painful to cough or sneeze and I still have to be careful how and what I move, but I'm much more flexible than before.  My left arm is still too sore - and attached to other sore body parts - to hang towels over the windows at night to block out the campground lights, but everything's gradually getting better.

Equally good news is that the kittens are now sleeping much more than they used to.  They're still a long way off the amount Lily sleeps, but they're gradually starting to act like adult cats.  They're about 6 weeks away from their 1st birthday, and for my money they can't grow up too soon, though apparently that's not something I have any say over.