You can walk or wheel in the path of the first flight

My family and I just got back from a vacation that included an opportunity to visit a historical site that is the very definition of humble beginnings that later developed into something world changing. I'm talking about the site of the Wright Brothers first airplane flight in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
And though the Wright Brothers story is all about getting airborne, people with mobility disabilities should be able to follow along in the path of the first flight like anyone, thanks to some thoughtful placement of simple mobility assistance devices.
The Wright Brothers National Memorial, which is run by the National Park Service, commemorates the place where man first flew in an engine-powered plane. There's a visitors center that includes replicas of the plane used for the first flight and of a glider the brothers from Ohio  used to test some of the principals of flight. The large stone memorial up on the hill is visible from far off and offers a beautiful view. But perhaps the most inspiring part of the site is where the flights actually happened. Marked with stone markers are the place where the lift off happened and then the landing spots of the four flights attempted on the fateful day of Dec. 17, 1903. The path out to the markers is thoughtfully paved, in a way, with a series of rubber screens placed over the sand. We wheeled our wheelchair using son all the way down and back without incident. When you walk down from the first landing to the fourth you really appreciate how quickly these men perfected what they had done.
The walk to the memorial up on Kill Devil Hill might be more of a challenge. We didn't take Marcus up. The paths looked like they might be OK for a strenuous push up, but we were concerned about how much effort it might take to come back down without having Marcus's chair get away from us. There's no info on the NPS Web site about just what sort of grade these paths present.
Oh yeah, the town of Kill Devil Hills also happens to be a great vacation spot, and one our family has been visiting for the last few summers and which I visited often as a kid with my family. It's hallmarks are nice wide beaches and an amount of visitors even in the high season that is much less than a Myrtle Beach or Florida.
That's probably because, ironically, it's not particularly easy to fly to the Outer Banks. Go figure.

 Photos by Darren Hillock. Top, the screened and very wheelable path along the path of the first flights. Bottom, the Wright Memorial.