Kill Devil Hills and Jamestown in a Day

The original plan had been to see Roanoke in the morning and Kill Devil Hills in the afternoon. The new plan was to see Kill Devil Hills in the morning and Jamestown in the afternoon.

We made sure to be at Kill Devil Hills as soon as the park opened. I didn’t know if Zaya would be really interested at first, but this stop was for me. I LOVE flying.

We went up to the memorial, getting some great exercise walking from the Visitor’s center to the top of the hill. When I was here before some restoration was going on so there wasn’t a clear view of the monument. Now that preparations are underway for the grand opening of the new Visitor’s center on the 20^th everything was sparkling clean.

Looking up to the memorial

The Memorial

We made it back down the hill in time for the 10 a.m. ranger program that took place just outside of the rebuilt hanger and workshop of Orville and Wilbur Wright. The ranger took lots of time to explain the events in detail. We felt like we went back in time.

Of course, we had a Jr. Ranger badge to earn. This meant inspecting each boulder marker for time and distance information. Dale and Zaya sprinted between the take-off point and 1^st landing to see if they could break the time of the 1^st flight. They did!

There is a new (at least to me) sculpture garden behind the monument. It is set up to be like the photo everyone sees, complete with photographer and onlookers. That put everything into perspective.

Again, we ended up spending several hours at Kill Devils forcing us to rush to Jamestown.

Miss Jr. Ranger

With 50 min to spare, we rushed into the Visitor’s center to collect the Jr. Ranger book. I selected the 4 pages that would be easiest to complete in the short amount of time. The ranger at the desk assured us that we would be fine.

We found the information needed from the Pocahontas sculpture, John Smith and everything else necessary. We rushed to the desk and the Ranger took her time, staying a few minutes over, to make Zaya a Jr. Ranger.

We then went back to the grounds (which stay open until dark) to visit the site. Zaya thought that it was great to recreate the wedding of Pocahontas in the ruins of the original church. She was surprised at the true story of Pocahontas, as it was different from the movie.

Zaya and Pocahontas

Reading old gravestones

We’d wanted to take Zaya to eat at one of the historic restaurants in the old Williamsburg. This was a great idea,

Some ruins

until, trying to maneuver thru small streets, realized that the 1600's town was not made for our truck pulling an RV. So much for that idea. We got back on the road, found a rest area and made our own dinner.