None of aviation's pioneers abroad took the simple, humble first step of gathering all the existing material on aeronautics and studying it carefully. The Wrights did, testament enough to their humility and their common sense. Kitty Hawk today is like most beach towns. Gray houses wait on stilts for the next hurricane. Concrete block condos, slowing corroding in the salt, dot the shoreline.
Cheap hotels hug the one main road.
There are drive-through liquor stores, surf shops with moldering boards, and everywhere souvenir shops. The beach is too crowded in the summer and likely too empty in the winter. Things are relaxed, settled, fixed. The Wright Brothers memorial, perched on Kill Devil Hill, is right off the main drag, behind the Dairy Queen and Amoco station. Tourists wander in on the occasional rainy morning, or after they've had their fill of the sun or sand.