2009 Vacation: Day 3

This morning started fairly lazy. Coffee, breakfast and watching some tv while we waited for all the kids to wake up. I finished reading all the rules to Last Night on Earth, the zombie board game I got for my birthday, so we can play it tonight. Our plan was to go to two Wright Brothers attractions today- the Wright Brothers Memorial Museum, a national park- and then after lunch go to Jockey's Ridge, a state park with sand dunes and information on the Wright Brothers. The first one is more educational, and the second is more active and fun- you slide down the sand dunes on plastic sleds.

We got to the national park at 10:00 am, figuring we'd be there for about an hour, do the Junior Rangers program (more on that later). As we were driving, Jen pointed out that we hadn't gotten any pictures of Van Go, which we decorated with hippie/flower magnets just for our trip. So when we got to the Wright Brothers Museum, I took a shot so you all can appreciate it:



Even though Van Go looks to be a loving symbol of peace and happiness, the kids wanted to make sure I got a picture proving that it is really a murderous machine:



What they're pointing at is a bird that Jen hit while driving 75 on the interstate. It was fairly gross, so I didn't want to get a close up. But then I totally did. Try and figure out where it's head is:



Okay, first of all, entry to the Wright Brothers Museum was super cheap-- kids 15 and under are free, and adults are $4. And get this- admission is good for a week if you keep your receipt. But what's best is the Junior Ranger program. The Junior Ranger program is something they do at nearly all national parks. It's a program where they give your kid an activity book with a bunch of different questions and activities they need to complete. All the information needed to answer the questions is found in the different information found at the displays and plaques around the national park. It's kind of a hit or miss program. Some of them, like the one here or the Smokey the Bear museum, are really good and age appropriate. Some, however, are too tedious and not fun-- like at the White Sands National Park-- it took several hours and it was boring and busy work. But like I said, this one was good and had different activities for different age levels.

One of the requirements to complete for the Junior Rangers program was to watch one of their movies, and right when we got there, a movie on the history of the Wright Brothers was starting, so we all settled in to watch it:



When it was over, we sat down to try to answer some of the sections of the Junior Ranger sheets that we could. This was fairly easy for us because several months ago, in preparation for this vacation, I had done an eight week science unit on the Wright Brothers-- so they pretty much already knew this information, and the movie was just a review for us (but still cool).



Here I am helping out with some of the stuff for Connor and Mason:



After that, we walked through the different displays. The museum is set up with one main building with displays, two offset buildings with more displays, and then the Wright Brothers monument itself with markers showing the distance of the different flights. We started with the indoor stuff, like this recreation of the engine used on the 1903 flyer:



Here's a shot of us in front of a cool mural of the flyer. What was cool is that they also had replicas of the 1902 glider and 1903 flyer at the museum (the original flyer is at the Smithsonian). It is insane how rickety and unsafe these things look. But the engineering behind them, especially considering the lack of knowledge at the time, is pretty amazing.



There was a bunch of other stuff inside, although I will say that I was a little disappointed with some of the inside displays-- they weren't geared to kids, which is fine, but they weren't really accessible to the family. But my kids were still into it (Connor was disappointed when we had to leave, he wanted to read every single plaque on every single display).

So here's a shot of the Wright Brothers memorial, which is on top of Kill Devil Hill. What's interesting is that Kill Devil Hill- being a sand dune- has actually moved 450 between 1902 and when the memorial was built-- but when they did the memorial, they planted grasses on it so it would remain where it is. But the deal is, the Wrights would slide the glider down this hill to get speed, and then hopefully have enough speed at the bottom to take flight. Imagine lugging all that stuff up there for a short 15 second flight.



Jen thought it was enough work having to carry a screaming 25 pound baby up to the top:



The view from the top was great. Look carefully at the picture below. The first (closest) rock you see is the take off point for the first flights the Wright Brothers took in December of 1903. The four markers beyond that rock is landing point of each of the four flights they took. The fourth (see it in the distance?) was 852 feet and Orville flew for 59 seconds. Pretty cool.



Here's some cool shots of the kids at the top of the memorial.





Here are two closer up shots of Orville's head.





Finally we walked back in and checked in with the park ranger to see if all their answers were right to the Junior Ranger sheets.



I hurt myself with all the walking. We thought we were going to be at this place for 45 minutes or so, but we ended up being there over three hours. All the walking was too much on my surgery.



Here, the park ranger was going over their answers. This guy was a real stickler, checking every single answer (at some places they don't bother to check-- I'm looking at you White Sands, New Mexico). Fortunately they had them all correct. Phew.



Here they are swearing their Junior Ranger oath. Yay! They made it! They got cool embroidered patches to add to their collection of... Junior Ranger patches!



On the way back, I had to get a shot of the biggest conversation topic in my house for the past 24 hours. When Gabe and I went to pick up my prescription last night, we first saw Dirty Dick's Crab House. Oh. My. God. We thought this was hysterical. I think that they should pay for the rights to the AC/DC song and have a commercial that sings, "Dirty Dick's and the food's dirt cheap!" The kids can't stop laughing like idiots over this.



Finally, we also passed the Brew Thru. Apparently in North Carolina you can just drive up to these glorified carports, tell them to load beer and alcohol into your car and then you drive away with it. Awesome!



In any event, we didn't get home until 1:30 and had WAY too much fun at the Wright Brothers museum. My groin is hurting pretty bad, so we decided not to do the sand dunes this afternoon. Indeed, we decided that if the weather permits, they will go to the sand dunes tomorrow and I'll stay home with Connor, Max and Jack, who can't do the sand dunes anyways. If it's raining, then Jen and the oldest six will go to the North Carolina museum and I'll stay home with the babies. But between all the walking yesterday and today, I'm doing too much and worried I'm going to aggravate my surgery. So I'm staying home tomorrow, and we're all planning on staying home on the 1st, so maybe two days of taking it easy will get me back into fighting shape.

As for the rest of today- the kids are in the hot tub right now and we're going to play Last Night on Earth tonight. Other than that, we don't have anything planned, so I'm not sure if there will be another update today.