Sand, Sea, and the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina

  After a great Thanksgiving visit with Duncan's Brother and his wife and daughter we headed for warmer weather.  We made it as far as Elizabeth City, North Carolina and stayed a few days in the campground on the Coast Guard Air Station.  It was just a short drive to the Outer banks where we checked out Kitty Hawk and Roanoke Island.

  We began at the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk, where the first powered flight occurred.

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Replica of the Wright Airplane

Marker of where they flew from.

Marker of the first flight.  The markers in the background show the second and third flights.

Here you can see the beginning and the markers for the four flights.

The view of the Wright Brother's camp and flight area.

  We headed out to Roanoke Island and located the site of the Lost Colony.  Still no sign of the colonists!  Actually, this was where the English first attempted to colonize, but the one hundred or so colonists where gone when their Governor returned with new supplies about three years after he had left them there.

Marker at the site of the Lost Colony at Roanoke Island.

Where the settlement was.

Another view of the area settled by the Lost Colony.

  We also drove along the Outer Banks so that we could check out the sand and the sea.

Sydney on the beach on the Outer Banks.

Perfect sand for writing in.

Lots of little crabs.

The Atlantic Ocean.

  Today we spent the day canoeing along the Great Dismal Swamp Canal.

The Great Dismal Swamp.

A turtle basking on the side of the canal.

The canal

We canoed to the Virginia border.  It was only three miles away.

More turtles