An Afternoon Hike

Saturday afternoon found us tramping around "Beaver Lake" with Mr. Reiche. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, especially back in the woods. We discovered a few pretty spring flowers,

and enjoyed being serenaded by the spring peepers and tree frogs that frequented the many ponds/swamps along the trails.

But the absolute highlight of the day is when Faith found a patch of Wintergreen berries . . .and a snake. Well, the snake kind of found her. :-) She had bent down to pick one of the berries, and was paused there, her face barely a foot from the ground when everyone started yelling something about a snake. She glanced over, expecting a cute little gardner snake to be hiding near by, and saw, with it's raised head a mere 2 inches from her extended hand, a very large, silvery/gray snake.

Here is a picture of the handsome fellow . . er . . lady. (We're not sure.)
This is a Blue Racer. An incredibly gorgeous snake! This one was easily over four feet long and a hefty 5-6 inches in circumference at the largest part.

It put on quite a show, vibrating it's tail in the dry leaves to make us think it was a rattler. Josh caught it and we were all able to pet it. (well, all of us who wanted to) So beautiful! You can not clearly see it in this picture, but the under side of the snake was a lovely shiny light blue/gray color. The scales were so smooth and soft. We couldn't stop exclaiming over how pretty this snake was! We let the snake go soon after and finished picking some wintergreen berries. Mmmm! They were very yummy!


Here is another picture I found so you can see it up close. Pretty, ain't it?

So if you are walking the trails at "Beaver Lake" some day, and come upon a wintergreen patch, keep an eye out for our friend, and be sure to say "Hello" for us!!

Genesis 3:1a "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field that the LORD God had made."