WOW! What a trip this turned out to be. Mike and I decided, at last instant, to take the trail west of here to the mountains and valley of West Virginia. Our target was Dolly Sods National Forest and our objective was to locate and find the notorious Milk Snake. Needless to say we exceeded our expectations finding four diffrent species of snakes three of which we have never encountered before thanks to Mike who discovered all four species. In addition to the snakes we found at least four different salamanders belonging to the genus Plethodon and Desmognathus.

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Milk Snake Encounter (below) found by Mike Gregory. This is the snake that Mike and I came all the way from Northern Virginia (a spur of the moment decision) to locate and photograph this animal. In addition to finding this snake Mike also found a smooth green

and two brown colored variant garter snakes.

I was able to find two ring neck snakes – a species very common to our area. Way to go Mike!!!