Michael Sprague near Asheville, North Carolina

There was an article in the newspaper recently about the observation tower at the peak of Mt Mitchell being torn down and a new one being built in its place. Well, since we had never seen the current one that is going to be destroyed, we though we better head out there and see it. This was not only my first time to Mt Mitchell State Park, but my first time on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Mount Mitchell is the highest point in the eastern United States at an elevation of 6,684 feet. It is interesting that air pollution and acid rain are contributing to the decline of the spruce-fir forests in the area.

View all the photos from this trip.

Some friends from the congregation and I, seven of us total, drove a little over two hours to hike in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest which is contained in the Nantahala National Forest. There are trees as old as 450 years there. It is one of the very few remaining tracts of virgin hardwood in the Appalachians. The large old trees are tulip-poplars, some with a circumference greater than 20 feet and over 100 feet tall.

View all my photos from the hike.

View information on the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. (1.4 mb pdf file)

These are the basics of my Asterisk PBX setup on Debian. I added an X10 interface so that motion sensors in the house could trigger Asterisk to make calls. It has the ability to automatically notify me when I walk in the door if there is new voicemail waiting. But, the reason I went down this road to begin with is that I can use my broadband Internet connection to make long distance phone calls anywhere in the continental US for 1.3 cents per minute.

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Well, we have been here in Asheville for almost three weeks now. Things are going very well. We love the area, we love the weather and we love our new congregation.

What we left behind.

Our first dusting of Asheville snow.

The Asheville West Kingdom Hall.

Streetscape panorama

Backyard panorama