Road Ghosts: I love mountain. I love bird. I love Boone.

The eating of eucalyptus continued into the morning. We had given up the eating of peanut butter bread for 8 hours as a sort of fast, and these new slices served us well to break our fast. With renewed vigor, we began sorting the food bags,

and blogging about it.

The 12 pm check-out time rolled around sooner than expected, so we checked-in out back and made the outside world our new hotel room.

From Greensboro's Cheapest Hotel, we traveled west, taking an exceedingly brief detour through Winston-Salem and a long and stormy road around mountains & through hollers.

We ended up in Boone, N.C., where we quickly found a suitable law firm,

a great deal,

and our new favorite hang-out, beansTalk, where we continued the morning's blogging and chilling.

The rain left wondrously misty mountains (later discovered to be some kind of "knob"),

and the evening found us in the home of Jeff Deal, a friend Keith had met in Mountain View, CA who works with Appalachian Voices, an organization in Boone whose mission is to stop mountain tops from being decimated for the purposes of coal extraction.

A former mountain in Logan County, West Virginia

Jeff graciously offered us the use of his house for sleeping, etc, and we accepted. Even more auspiciously, we arrived just in time for an elegant dinner party of friendly proportions. The food was delicious, and it was awesome to meet & talk to so many cool people from the area. Boone was already worming its way into our hearts.

After a lovely Sunday morning brunching with Jeff and his partner Jaime, we headed off to Elk Knob,

a newly crowned State Park and home to many wonders, including orange flowers,

their green blobbish fruits,

& plump bugs.

We reached the summit, 5520 feet above the base,

closer to the clouds,

and in view of neighboring mountains.

While on the summit, we discovered a tiny forest.

It was all downhill from there.

We took the long way back to Boone so as to feast our eyes on all that could be ours. Along the way we met 1 gopher, 2 vultures, 1 rabbit, 1 deer, plus 5 tiny chihuahuas walking a bulldog in the middle of the road. Colts & calves were mothered and abundant.

After dinner at the local favorite Coyote Kitchen, we returned to Jeff's home to settle in for some more blogging. But not before making use of his in-house kegerator refigerator tap

and toasting our fortunes.

"To getting wasted!" "To getting land!" "To getting us!"

We spent the next day also in Boone, meeting and lunching with Kent Hively who runs Appalachian Energy Solutions out of Jeff's house, and Caroline who works there with him.

Kent and Caroline were very generous with their time and information, giving us a real sense of what it's like to do the things we want to do out here. In fact Kent is buying 60 acres himself just 15 minutes from here!

We were able to contact a real estate agent with a degree in alternative energy who used to co-house in Santa Cruz. We also left a message for Mr. Conservation Easement, the busiest man in Boone, who buys large tracts of land only to preserve them.

Just as we were about to leave for Knoxville, TN, we received word that the fabled Matt Wasson, Conservation Director of Appalachian Voices, had invited us to his mountain home for an evening of beers and fireflies. We could not refuse.

Dinner eaten & brews procured, we previewed the firefly show that awaited us as we drove along the winding mountain roads. You see, these were no ordinary fireflies, but rather rare synchronous fireflies, who flash their bioluminescence in chorus after remaining dark together.

When we arrived at Matt's house (who, incidentally, wrote an article about the very phenomenon we were witnessing here), we grabbed the brewskis and some lawn chairs and set up shop in the middle of his road facing the woods. The lightning bugs glowed green and sparkling at regular intervals as Matt's husky, Cain, roamed and howled and eventually curled up in a ball next to us. It was magical. The four of us talked politics and music and future and past until the moon rose and midnight rolled around, which is the time when all road ghosts must leave their new friends' houses. Good night Matt!