Wright Brothers National Memorial (Kill Devil Hills, NC)

We visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial on our vacation a few weeks ago -- nobody in our group had ever been, and I had just days before listened to David McCullough talk about his new Wright Brothers book on NPR, so I was really excited to go. Most people associate the Wrights with Dayton, Ohio, were they were born and began their work, but the actual first flight that put them on the map happened in the Outer Banks in 1903 -- right where the memorial and museum are located now, in fact.

It was about a hundred degrees (literally) but that didn't stop the kids from zooming around on Wilbur and Orville's original flight path pretending to be airplanes (with the help of a glider from the gift shop Anne got to try a little flight of her own). When it got too hot for that, we went back inside to look at all of the portraits lining the walls of the main room, of important figures in aeronautics history (so cool).

But by far the best part was the talk the park guide gave, on the Wright Brothers, their lives, their work, and the history of the Outer Banks and what it was like when they worked there. It was about a half hour long, all together, and our speaker was so knowledgeable and passionate about the topic that his words made me tear up. There is something about the "death of impossibility" that the Wright Brothers made come about that is inspiring even all these years later. It was also pretty shocking to put it all together and realize that only 66 years after that first 12-second flight man walked on the moon. Crazy!

Anyway, that was MY favorite part of the visit, the four and one year olds we brought were not so into it and got tired pretty quickly. But for older kids, especially aviation buffs, this is an OBX must-see.