IN MY MIND I'M GOING TO CAROLINA

. . .but I went there in body today too.

In spite of the overcast, drizzly weather I decided to go on a little adventure today and ventured into North Carolina, hitting up the well-renowned Outer Banks. Not fully having a game plan for my trek, I ended up going on a type of self-imposed field trip as I made my way to some historical places. Moseying along the thin stretch of land, I popped by the Wright Brothers National Memorial, the site of Orville and Wilbur Wright's flight attempts and eventual success. The hill below was where the brothers experimented with gliders and where they eventually had their, and the world's, first successful power-driven flight on December 17, 1903. Atop the hill is a monument erected in their honor.

*Side note: although the town of Kitty Hawk (which I also passed through) is often cited as the location of the Wright brothers work/success, it actually took place in a town called Kill Devil Hills. On another side note, being that the name of the town is quite unusual, I decided to look into it when I got home. Here's what I found: "The name Kill Devil Hills can be dated back to the colonial era. Shipwrecks were common at the time, and many of the ships were transporting barrels of rum. Upon a shipwreck, locals would scavenge the ship and hide the rum they found behind the large sand dunes. The locals said that the rum was strong enough to "kill the devil," so the dunes where they would hide the rum were nicknamed 'Kill Devil Hills.'" Interesting.*

The next leg of my trip found me crossing over to Roanoke Island and stopping in at the Roanoke Island Festival Park, which was billed as 'an interactive family attraction that celebrates the first English settlement in America'; read: interactive awkwardness for a single, young adult, female visiting the place by herself. Exhibit A: upon boarding the ship below, a replica of one of the ships from the Roanoke Voyage of 1585, a few time-period characters showed me the ropes and then coaxed me into singing a song with them that I had never heard before. Needless to say, it wasn't a pretty sight. . .or sound really.

After that 'fun' experience, I then wandered over to the 'settlement' area where I proceeded to converse with some other time-period characters, who astonishingly already knew of the Seattle-area despite it being the late 1500s, hmm. Thinking that I had gotten all that I was going to get out of that stop, and hoping to avoid further humiliation, I decided to move on to my next, and last, historical location of the day.

Perhaps you recall learning about the Roanoke Colony, a.k.a. "The Lost Colony", back in the day. It was set up to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony, and it is where Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas was born. However, after three years of being on their own, when ships from England returned nobody was to be found and no one knows for sure what became of the colonists. On my last stop of the day, at the purposed location of where the colony had been, I wasn't able to find the lost colonists either. I did however learn another fact about the area that I wasn't expecting; apparently Roanoke Island served as a 'safe haven' for slaves during the Civil War and became known as the Freedmen's Colony, becoming a refuge for thousands of slaves. One thing that I found neat is that a couple hundred years after the first (failed) attempts to make something monumental of this land it did end up playing an important role in American history and the lives of Americans. Pretty cool.

As you can see, it was quite the educational day. . .I do love history though (and I hope you enjoyed the brief historical review as well). And now I can also check North Carolina off the 'states I haven't been to' list. One more down, still quite a few yet to go. But in the midst of trying to hit up all of the states, I just might have to make a return trip to the Outer Banks at some point. Despite the less than desirable weather, I can see how the area would be positively sublime for a summer getaway, perhaps I'll have to take that into consideration when the summer months roll around this upcoming year. You're more than welcome to come along as well.