The Tarheel State (and what the heck is a "tarheel", anyway?) is smack dab in the middle of the country's eastern coast, and I-95 runs right through it. So I've been there many times, in many trips taken up and down the coast. And yet I haven't really been inspired to take a lot of photos there. My pal Chris and I drove through it in 1969 on our way from Fort Lauderdale to Vermont. But so far I've made only one vacation there, and that was with my family in 1984.

Easter Eggs at Nags Head

	Occurred: 4/22/1984 Posted: 3/22/2022		Page Views: 582
Hashtags: #NagsHead #EasterEggHunt
Our yearly Easter celebration consists only and entirely of an Easter Egg hunt, in pretty clothes, for the photo op.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (610 words)

Each Easter since the kids were little, I've taken them someplace visually interesting to stage an Easter Egg hunt. Mary and I would dress them in their new Easter outfits, which would serve as their "good" outfits (for birthday parties, for example) for the next year. This year, with things going pretty well for us financially, we decided to take a vacation in North Carolina's Outer Banks, specifically near Kitty Hawk, so I could show the kids where the first airplane flew.

Outer Banks Flight

By: Paul S Cilwa	Occurred: 4/23/1984 Posted: 12/1/2025		Page Views: 308
Hashtags: #Outerbanks #NorthCarolina #Flightseeing
Our first time in a small plane.
Estimated reading time: 4 minute(s) (794 words)

The day after Easter, we gathered on the sandy edge of North Carolina, ready for a "Flightseeing" tour that promised a new perspective on the Outer Banks. We would be flying over the same landscape the Wright Brothers had flown over on the very first heavier-than-air flight. The planes were small, so Mary, Karen and Dorothy boarded one, while Jenny, John, and I and my camera rode in another. As the propellers turned and the shoreline slipped behind, we rose into a view that stretched from dune to ocean, a sweep of coast that seemed both fragile and endless.

Kill Devil Hills: Jockey's Ridge and the Wright Brothers

By: Paul S Cilwa	Occurred: 4/24/1984 Posted: 12/1/2025		Page Views: 366
Hashtags: #Places
Playing in sands steeped in history.
Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s) (547 words)

The following morning we traded wings for sand, climbing the vast slopes of Jockey's Ridge. The dune rose like a golden mountain above the flat coast, its shifting ridges shaped by the wind into playgrounds for anyone willing to scramble and slide. We ran, laughed, and felt the grit of the sand cling to our shoes, the same landscape that had inspired hang gliders and kite flyers for decades.