126 miles, 7.5 hours.

Since we ended in Elizabeth City yesterday, it made sense to start from there today. I was the first one awake, so I grabbed the laptop and went to the hotel lobby for breakfast. They were so busy that I had to share a small table with some other guests. That was okay, but it was a bit of a zoo. Dad joined me out there when I was finishing up- and we got back to the room about the time the girls were (finally!) waking.

Mom and Dad wanted to go to church, so we found a local ward and sent them over there. Tamara and I snoozed and snuggled, then met them at the church building so we could all leave from there.

Unfortunately, it was already almost noon, so we were boiling in our moto gear, sitting in the sun. We quickly headed east towards Kitty Hawk.

The ride from Elizabeth City to Kitty Hawk is through some of the lowlands and swamps of North Carolina. It's the sort of primordial soup that looks like it would be home to alligators and other creepy crawly things.

Kitty Hawk is famous for being the home of the first Wright Brothers powered flights in 1903, and it is also the northern end of the Outer Banks. We enjoyed the architecture of the houses along the Outer Banks, then went in to the Kitty Hawk/First Flight national park. There are some nice exhibits about the Wright Brothers, monuments showing how far each flight was, reproductions of the Kitty Hawk flyers, and so on. We spent over 2 hours there- it certainly helps that most of us have a real interest in aviation.

We then went down the street for a late (3pm) lunch and then headed south again, ending up in Hatteras, NC. This whole area is basically a low-lying sand peninsula, sometimes just a couple hundred yards wide.

We stayed at a nice little motel in Hatteras. It was an older place with views of water from both the front AND back of the room. Pretty usual to get that, especially for a good price! The area was probably packed with people last night, but this is Sunday night, so things start getting quieter.

Mom spotted a cute little kitten outside of our room, so Tamara and I went out to investigate. It was a tortoiseshell that couldn't have been more than a few months old- just old enough to lose her bushy cone-shaped tail. It was very lean and frightened of people. We fed it some cream cheese (about the only thing we had that was kitty-palatable) and called the Humane Society. Poor little thing. I was able to hold her for a while (and have the scratches to prove it). She's obviously hungry and alone. Aw.