First Things First

First things first! So, you’re asking, what do you mean by that? Well, our sightseeing in this part of the country centered on a lot of “firsts”. We visited Kitty Hawk, where the first flight took place; toured Jamestowne which was the first permanent English settlement in America; and took a drive down the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which encompasses 30,000 acres of land and is the first national seashore in the country!

Below is a statue of Captain John Smith, the first Governor of Virginia, looking out towards the James River. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and temperatures in the mid-80's. It was a perfect day to be walking around historic Jamestowne Island.

Sandy wanted to hold the hand of Pocahontas, the daughter of Indian Chief Powhatan. When she became a Christian, she changed her name to Rebecca. After marrying John Rolfe in 1614, she traveled to England with him, and died there at the young age of 22. The history books here say that her saving the life of John Smith was purely a figment of Smith's imagination. At any rate, don't rely on the movie made by Disney for her true story!

We also visited Yorktown, part of the historic triangle in Virginia. Below is the field where the second siege took place and Gen. George Washington and Marquis de Lafayette won the battle over Lord Cornwallis. This signaled the beginning of the end for England’s domination over us. If it weren’t for Washington and Lafayette, we might be singing “Hail to the Queen” rather than “God Bless America”! Would it have resulted in McDonald's asking if we would like chips with our bangers instead of fries with our hamburgers? Would we be calling guys "blokes"?

Here is the Moore house, where both sides agreed to meet after the English surrender. The Capitulation was signed on Oct. 19, 1781. The park ranger at Yorktown gave an amazing one hour speech about the battle here. Where was he when I was studying American history in high school?

On Tuesday, we drove south to North Carolina. Is that an oxymoron???? Anyway, our first stop of the day was at the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills. Here is a tidbit that we discovered: Kill Devil Hills was named after the foul tasting rum that washed ashore after shipwrecks, which locals said would “kill the devil”. Must have been pretty bad. The huge memorial in the background stands on Kill Devil Hill.

Another view of the monument, only much closer! ! I had to walk from one end of the visitor center and up the hill to get this picture.

After spending about 3 hours at this National Park, we headed south again, down the Outer Banks of North Carolina. So this is what the sign meant when it said, "Watch for sand and water on the road". The ocean was on one side of us, and either Currituck Sound or the North River was on the other side. There was no turning east or west in many stretches of the drive.

We made it to Cape Hatteras and got to view the famous lighthouse there. Standing at 208 feet tall, it is the tallest brick beacon in the United States. It was constructed in 1870, and certainly must be pretty sturdy, considering all the hurricanes and tropical storms that have passed by here.

On the way back north to our campground in Virginia Beach, we stopped and took a stroll along a deserted beach. It was lovely, lots of shells were scattered over the area and we had occasional glimpses of little crabs crawling into tiny holes in the sand. We did have to be careful not to step on the translucent jellyfish that had been washed ashore. Don caught this picture of me looking at something interesting. It was probably one of those jellyfish.

Sandy found this live starfish on the beach. Don’t worry, we treated it as a “catch and release” and the tiny thing was put gently back into the ocean by Sandy.