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 Excited
at first, Wilbur’s tone became more sober by the time he reached the Outer
Banks. The Wrights planned their first visit to North Carolina as a kind of
sportsmen's vacation. Even if their ideas on flight proved unworthy, they
still wanted the trip to be the adventure of a lifetime. And it turned out
to be just that.
First, they had to sleep in tents, for their were no
houses for rent. They had to settle for making the spars of their craft of
white pine, for there was no spruce. Even that was shorter than planned,
thus forcing them to scale down other components. More compromise.
The trip to the Outer Banks tested Wilbur's resolve. In
fact, he couldn’t find anyone who had even heard of Kitty Hawk, let alone
anyone who could take him there. Wilbur began to feel the dull ache of
failure in his gut. Soon, he might have to pack up and return to Dayton,
having accomplished nothing.
And life among the dunes was far from luxurious. Forced to
sleep in freezing conditions, not knowing if their thin tent would be picked
up and carried away by the wind during the night, and them with it, caused
them great concern. Wilbur wrote home of rations so poor that eating
condensed milk off a spoon was a good dessert. This was a true test of their
self-reliance.
For easier access to the big dunes, they decided to
establish a more permanent camp at Kill Devil Hills, arriving on July 12,
1901. They soon began building a hangar, a 25-foot-long, 16-foot-wide,
6-foot-high shed whose ends were hinged so they could be raised and used as
awnings.
Next:
On the Brink of Powered Flight
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