The Krohn Family

This summer we traveled to North Carolina for vacation.  The kids thought we were just going to Grandma and Grandpa Tatsapaugh’s 50th Wedding Anniversary and some site-seeing.  We surprised them by taking a long site-seeing trip and landed at the same beach house we rented last year.  They thought we were joking until we said, “Get out and help unpack the car!”   “This is awesome!” was the unanimous response.  I have never seen them get out of the car so fast.  One of the pictures in the beach house shows a satellite view of the North Carolina Outer Banks (OBX).  The red dot (my addition) on the picture to the right indicates where Kitty Hawk is located on the OBX.  Click the photo for a higher resolution view.

Our first full day in Kitty Hawk was highlighted with a trip to the Wright Brothers Memorial for the 31st Annual Kitty Hawk Kite Festival.  What a great place to fly a kite on the historic grounds where the Wright brothers experienced the first powered flight.  There were professional kite flyers with giant kites and stunt kites.  There were also kites for the kids to color and fly on their own.  Here is a short video of our afternoon at the festival.   We all became so enthralled by kites that day that kite flying became a theme of the week on the beach.  Lots more pictures of the Kite Festival are here.

The bulk of our time in Kitty Hawk was time at the beach.  With a simple shovel and some imagination, we spent hours each day building sand castles and “hot tubs”.  We also had lots of practice and fun with the boogie boards.  All of us gave it a try in some way or another.  Emily was the main surfer of the family with Mom and Dad often at her side.  Joshua picked it up in the final couple of days, loving the feeling of riding a wave.  Matthew wasn’t quite big enough so he often stood on the shore watching and pretending he caught a big one.  I’ve pulled together a 10 minute video of highlights from the beach.  MANY more pics of beach time can be seen here in our SmugMug gallery.

Another theme of the week was our new pet, “Crabby”.  We found a horseshoe crab on the first day and adopted him (or his shell) for the rest of week.  We took lots of silly pictures of Crabby including this shot of Joshua ready to have some crab dinner.  You can see more Crabby pics here.

For a distraction from the beach and to enjoy some of the regional character, we spent a day on Roanoake Island.  We enjoyed the peaceful harbor town of Manteo including spending the better part of the day in the Roanoake Island Festival Park, a historical center with a combination of museum and education center and living Adventure Museum, similar to Conner Prairie near home.  We walked through the grounds and met people in full costume and character from the time of the first settlers over 400 years ago.  The kids especially liked getting to go on a real replica ship and meet the sailors and learn how the shipped sailed in its day.  Another highlight was the community area where blacksmiths, wood workers and security guards taught us about the tools and ways of the time. The kids loved putting on the shields of armour and pretending to be brave.  Lots of pics of our time in Manteo and the Festival Park are available here.

On the north of Roanoake Island is the Elizabethan Gardens.  What a beautiful way to spend a sunny July day.  We walked all around the gardens, climbed trees and did a scavenger hunt for hidden articles throughout the gardens.  We finished the day with a family picture taken by self timer on the garden’s lawn.

Lots more pictures of the time in the gardens can be seen here.

I took lots of pictures throughout the vacation.  You can see the whole gallery on SmugMug here.  Don’t miss the beach video highlights as you can see why we went back…and why we hope to visit OBX again.