Adventures in the wilderness

While my mom was here, we all decided to go on a few adventures. One of the adventures was a hike in the Eno River State Park. The park is only about a 20 minute drive from our house, which is convenient. It has something like 21 miles of maintained hiking trails. It also has areas for fishing, camping and picnicking. Although we walked quite a ways on a few of the trails, we only touched the surface of what there is to see.

One of the things we did see was a snake! We were crossing a bridge over the stream and just before we stepped off there was a long black snake.

 Mom jumped back with a bit of a scream while Shawn ran over to take pictures. We knew there were snakes because we saw some snake skin that had been shed along the trail, but we hoped they wouldn't really cross our path.

The best part of the snake experience was the couple traveling behind us. As we stood on the bridge watching the snake skeptically, the couple walked past us and right up to it. The woman declared, "Oh, don't worry. He's benign." Then while her husband poked at the snake she said, "Look, it's even used to people!" The couple then moved on, and we stood there thinking about how crazy they were. Benign? Ok, so maybe the snake couldn't kill us, but how can a snake really be socialized to people? I didn't want to test it out, and my mom certainly didn't. Luckily the man's poking and prodding made the snake leave, so we continued on to some other areas of the park before heading back to get some lunch.The picture below is of Shawn crossing the bridge.