Beyond the favorable conditions for gliding, the welcoming response to a letter Wilbur wrote to the local weather station settled the matter. William Tate, the best-educated resident of the little hamlet, enthusiastically endorsed Kitty Hawk as a fine place to conduct the experiments Wilbur described, and he offered to help in any way he could.

The trip to Kitty Hawk was arduous, and weather proved unpredictable. Sudden squalls frequently blew in off the ocean, and the constantly shifting sand got into everything. Insects, especially mosquitoes, pestered them. Food was scarce, so the Wrights always brought their own provisions. Years later Orville remarked that the place was “like the Sahara, or what I imagine the Sahara to be.”

Despite the hardships, Wilbur and Orville viewed their trips to Kitty Hawk as vacations. They enjoyed escaping the tedium of city life, grew fond of the Tates and other local folk they came to know, and found the chance to test their ideas in the field exhilarating.
 
The brothers always returned to Dayton feeling rejuvenated. Years later they would look back on their times at Kitty Hawk as some of the happiest of their lives.