How to get to Kittyhawk from Seattle with kids to learn about where the Wright brothers flew for the first time

As with most things in my life before becoming a mom of boys, I cared as little about airplanes as I did about garbage trucks, diggers, bulldozers, buses and UPS delivery vehicles. But my guys have been enthralled with airplanes and everything travel since their first hotel stay at the Westin Grand Vancouver when they were 5 months old. And then trips with airplanes took over. So it is only natural that visiting Kittyhawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina would be on our bucket list.  We needed to see where the Wright brothers’ first airplane flight took place.

Raleigh, North Carolina from Seattle via Alaska Air

I’m pretty sure there is currently one flight a day from Seattle to Raleigh on Alaska Air because my husband takes it once a year for work and Raleigh has become a place on my travel radar because he’s been there a bunch of times now. This year it finally felt like I could do a flight alone with the guys to meet him(they are nine but I am a little bit scared of flying, being in tight spaces, and being in a metal tin magically physics-ing it’s way through the air) so we decided to visit North Carolina for a few days and see it for ourselves.  Since my family tends to like beach more than city I found out through my research that many east coast beaches were within driving distance of the airport so I narrowed down a few destinations within a 3.5 hour radius of the airport. This is how I figured out exactly where Kittyhawk was and how we would make it fit into our lives.  We had a few days to visit the area so we made Virginia Beach our home base and decided that Kittyhawk would be a side trip.

Another first flight place you should add to your travel list!

I don’t always do my trip research at home in Seattle-some of this Kittyhawk research was done when we were on a trip to Italy.  And because the idea of learning about the history of flying was fresh in my mind when we were in Florence, I wanted to make sure my kids thought about Leonardo Da Vinci who also was fascinated by flight. We took a side-trip to Fiesole, and hiked through the hills where it is said that Leonardo Da Vinci owned an olive grove and may have tested the first flying machine too. It was awe-inspiring to hike in the fresh air overlooking Florence and imagine one of history’s greatest minds trying out his inventions here.

Kittyhawk and what to see

The older I get the more I realize how much of our technological advances seem to have come in the past little while.  It is so crazy to believe that the first flight happened only 85 years ago.  It was 12 seconds long and you can walk its route at the Wright Brothers National Memorial.  The visitor center is undergoing renovations and should open later this year, but we still had a great visit outdoors and it took us just over an hour to see everything we wanted to see.  We brought water and wore sunscreen and we did quite a bit of walking.  There were many people visiting so I really had to work the angles and crop to get my pictures, but it was pretty amazing to see how many people who like us, wanted to pay tribute to the first flyers who made so much of our life today possible with their invention.  I know that after we visited my guys were a lot more attentive on the flight home to Seattle.  I think they really appreciated seeing how far flight has come since its early days and how much we rely on what Wilbur and Orville Wright did.

Where to eat in Kittyhawk?

We spotted a strawberry farm on our way from Virginia Beach to Kittyhawk and stopped to pick some berries.  There we were told that we had to go eat at Tortugas Lie.  We also passed by a frozen yogurt place that I saw in the freezer of Taste (a really yummy sandwich shop in Virginia Beach).  Surfin Spoon is closed on Sundays but I wish we could have stopped in.  We also ate a Duck donuts in Duck so we were really stuffed, but there are quite a few Duck donuts in the area so this would be a good stop near Kittyhawk as well.

Are your kids a fan of airplanes?  I have a popular post about airplane books if you are expanding your library.  We also picked up this book about the Wright brothers for the boys when we were in Kittyhawk too!

(PS. there are affiliate links in this post where I might earn a small fee if you buy the products and as always the opinions and writing in this post are my own)

(PPS. I also heard there were places you can pick peanuts in this area as well and we almost drove out to see them.  Make sure you call ahead before you ever visit a farm and expect to pick anything.  Peanut harvesting happens around October not in May.)

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)