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!


We've found Boone to be a delight and very promising. A veritable home away from home.

Many thanks to Jeff & Jaime for their incredible hospitality and thanks to Boone for being super cool.

"I love mountain. I love bird. I love Boone."
–Ben O'Brien, age 1

Norfolk Excursion

After browsing Edenton we headed for a short excursion through Norfolk


and to a Holiday Trav-L-Park in Virginia Beach.


We were supposedly among thousands of people sleeping there. We gladly paid $35 to pitch our tent among the wacky signs and silly toilets. We took a quick jump into the beach and headed to our guardian's office.


He showed us some property, much of it a bit too far from the tri-city area for our liking. We could not get in touch with the seller agents and had to rush back to North Carolina


to buy a new car


and to pick up a treat being shipped to us via freight.


We drove another hour to Greensboro


and settled, this time for good. We celebrated by eating more eucalyptus.

Elite Coastal Properties, Part 3

On the way up to Virginia we stopped in the war torn town of Edenton, North Carolina.

We saw a sign after the tracks
Took our real estate to the MAX
With the help of Tina Slack's
Expertise in local tracts.


We sorted through the properties and picked our favorites in the mix.

Alec Holland, ABR, CRS, ePRO, GRI

170 acres for $350,000, with half a mile of frontage on a large river.

"Property has approx 3500 ft of frontage on the river. Great property for development. Near the Creswell city limits. Posibility of connecting to city sewage and water with formal agreement with city. Great opportunity for investers."

As a special treat, it appeared to be a short drive from the Albemarle Sound:

However, Tina found the price ($2,000/acre) to be suspicious, so she talked to Tim from the Mappings Dept of Washington County. In fact Tim had done the survey for that property, and his notes for us were as follows:

Almost entire area is a swamp.

Recommend a specialist to determine feasability of building 6 homes on this property.

Our hearts plunged and were eaten by a crocodile.*

*Crocodiles do not live in the US. You were probably thinking of Alligators.

Long Lost Faves

Next on faves was 112 acres for $285,000 ($2,500/acre), with several creeks and shooting lanes. However, it was in Rich Square, pretty far from both Edenton and from our final destination for the day, Norfolk.

We had to pass it up, along with another property in Lowland – 105 acres for $400,000 ($3,800/acre) which did not look very interesting.

Fruitcake

This left only one viable option. To get there, Tina sent us over a river

and through a woods



Grandma says:

Nature lover's dream home! Tucked in the midst of 50 glorious acres with access to the Albemarle Sound, this cute home offers an open floor plan & handicap access. There's a serene 3/4 acre pond surrounded by walking trails, wildlife, and appr. 12 cleared acres lovingly planted with a variety of Fruit Trees, Pecans Trees, Grape Vines & blueberries. Greenhouse, Large Workshop. County H20 available.

All that for only $275,000, not bad, except that's $5,300/acre. Not as mouth-swamping as those wetlands, but not bad.

After several minutes crawling up the driveway into the property, the place felt very open. A large cleared bushy area served as a several-acre front yard.

Hundreds of birds gave us the cold shoulder.

They didn't care one bit about our visit and would rather read the morning paper or live up to their lofty ideals, never speaking a word to humans.

Through detective work we deduced that fruit is everything to these people.

Passionfruit

Grapes

A medium quiet pond sat near the back.

Around it sat an unknown volume of woods (only unknown when measured in ping pong balls).

Since we didn't have a map of the property, we just pretended, and correctly prophesied that we would not get shot.

The house was acting standoffish, dodging questions about the war, so we left it alone. For the birds, we say.

Overall this property was nice. A field for frisbee, semi-mature fruit trees already planted, woods, and a pond. The only downsides were slightly low acreage / high price per acre, and a shallow pond teeming with stillness. And of course location: Edenton is a small town of 5,000 residents.

City	Distance	Population
Elizabeth City	45 min	17,000
Greenville	1 hr 45 min	75,000
Norfolk, VA / Virginia Beach / Newport News	1 hr 30 min	1,500,000

We moved on to the metropolis of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Newport News for a short visit with Guardian Miguel...

Smoked Ghost

As we entered the foggy city of Greenville, North Carolina, our angel shouted our names


and shook our snacky peanut butter hands with vigor.


Once we learned that the fog was not in fact fog, and we were in fact being smoked, we swam upstream to a property 20 minutes outside the city.

If you had sharper eyes, you would see Godfrey putting on
a small performance piece using a free limb.

Mrs. Real Estate sez:

Approx. 600 road frontage. Soil report on file, percs for 5 large tracts, plus 2 septic systems installed on old homesite. Cut over 3-5 years ago. County Water tap in place. Perfect for mini-farm subdivision, or build your private homestead on this beautiful tract with a short commute to the hospital and/or ECU. Small pond on site and bordered by a nice creek

The land was nice,


but cut.


And we quickly realized we were not alone.


Around the watering hole, adjectives made Heather feel something.


Word on the street is that they were murky, small, and still. Luckily we didn't get too down on ourselves and soon found a roller coaster.


Along the front, among six hundred feet of road frontage, sat an invisible home with septic tank and clean green coaltricity:


A long animal confirmed our suspicions of non aloneness, and raised hairs of Godfrey, former venom victim.


After exploring, the interim road ghosts shared the evening together,


and traversed our usual checklist of Guardian Angel Discussion Topics:

1. Shriners. White Masons have asked black Masons on a play date. Developing story.
2. The Confederate flag. According to Godfrey, not about hate, black people just have too much time on their hands. Debatable.
3. Flooding. Before Y2K, Greenville flooded 25 feet. Heavy rains and opened floodgates rushed water from state capital. No love for Raleigh.
4. Sweat rags. Essential.

As the sky darkened, we said goodbye and went on our way.


As we arrived at an RV resort some miles away, Godfrey and his bluetooth checked to make sure we made it OK. We had, and did, and our morning calisthenics around the lake ended with a surprise.


Overall Greenville did not impress during our short visit. We hear it's a nice place. But Northward we continued.