Kitty Hawk

It's amazingly audacious that 2 high school dropouts would even think they were capable of building something and doing something that had never been built and never been done. After coming up with the wings that Wilbur designed after watching a turkey vulture, they built the engine using an aluminum block, something that had never been done. On Dec 17th 1903 Orville flew their contraption 120 feet. Orville and Wilbur swapped out piloting duties and made 3 more flights-175 feet, 200 feet and finally 852 feet. The plane was destroyed later that day by a gust of wind. They hadn't tied it down. Sounds like something I'd do. The monument is well done. Kudos to the Park service. The big boulder in the pic is the takeoff point. That rock has been touched by pilots ranging from Amelia Earhart to Chuck Yeager to Neil Armstrong and now me. We also visited Jockey Ridge SP. It has the largest sand dunes on the east coast.