Stokes County – Page 5 – Into the Woods

Give bats a break

www.batcon.org

What’s Halloween without bats?

Many bat species are endangered, and bat populations are threatened worldwide. Many organizations and universities are working to save bat populations. One thing we can do, if we have a place, is to give bats a place to live.

The University of Florida has a fairly gothic bat house:

Here’s another nice bat house in Tallahassee:

Lucky me. I have plenty of room for bats on my place in Stokes County. I’ve already bought a couple of these ready-made bat houses. I’ll put them up on the hill on the other side of the branch, not too close to the house:

I’m looking forward to having bats as neighbors. They’re very useful to have around, because they eat mosquitos. Though I think the cute bat below is a fruit-eating bat.

www.batcon.org

No wireless Internet on new Alltel tower

I’ve been hanging out of a couple of Internet forums frequented by cell-phone nerds hoping to find out whether broadband Internet service is available on the new Alltel tower on Mission Road east of Danbury.

I think I have a reliable answer now from an Alltel field technician. The answer is that, at present, the new tower supports only regular cell phone service. It seems Alltel is still making decisions about where to expand its Internet broadband service in 2008.

This type of service, by the way, is called EVDO broadband, and it supports Internet connections at about the same speeds as DSL. Where available, it costs about $60 a month. To use the service, one buys a wireless PCMCIA card and inserts it into a laptop.

There also are wireless routers than can take the EVDO signal and share it onto a WiFi network.

I certainly hope Alltel provides Internet broadband in rural Stokes before much longer. It’s expensive, but it’s less expensive than satellite Internet, and, given that cell phone towers are now common in rural areas, it’s probably the best way of delivering broadband Internet to more remote rural areas.

Some Stokes photos

It’s always a good morning when the Winston-Salem Journal has a story and pictures from Stokes County. It reminds me how darned picturesque Stokes is.

The Journal has a story this morning on crews doing wildfire practice near Hanging Rock State Park.

Winston-Salem Journal

And from WXII.com, a photo of the leaves starting to turn on Pilot Mountain.

WXII

Stokes County canopy tours??

Winston-Salem Journal

Along comes another piece of evidence on the resourcefulness of Stokes County people in finding neat little economic niches in the Stokes woods and hills. It’s canopy tours, from a place called “Carolina Ziplines.”

I don’t know about y’all, but I can’t wait.

Winston-Salem Journal