Sleeping Pads and Snakes

Jim and I went camping the other weekend (Labor Day Weekend). Well, kinda, maybe sorta.... maybe not quite camping... Jim has friends who have property in West Virginia. A lot of property. In the middle of nowhere. Beautifully in the middle of nowhere. However, the property is essentially the people's second home and occasionally their primary home. So all the amenities are there.

There is a house, with running hot and cold water, showers, and potties! We cook dinner in the kitchen, eat around the dinn...ping pong table, and have at our disposal any sort of creature comforts you can think of. And none of the 'important' things like tvs, cable, cell phone reception. There is internet, but it's only utilized for things like checking the weather and researching snakes.

However, all amenities aside, Jim and I are weird. We know that already. But back to things at hand. We prefer to forgo the nice fluffy beds available to us (or couches depending on how many people are up there) and pitch our tent away from the buildings and 'camp out'. We have a nice tent, completely waterproof (we confirmed this already), wonderfully warm sleeping bags, pillows - the whole kit-n-caboodle. But I'm a weenie. Jim is perfectly happing taking his sleeping bag and just sleeping anywhere. I have to have the tent – bugs. Warm sleeping bag – too cold otherwise. Pillow – because everyone sleeps better with their own pillow. And as of Labor Day weekend, wonderfully new fluffy sleeping pads. They're self inflatable, too!

What a difference those new pads made. No stiff joints in the morning. My hips didn't hurt. My arms didn't fall asleep! ...Wait, it just goes downhill from here, doesn't it? Man, I'm not even old and this getting old crap sucks.

Anyhow, so I was very pleased with my purchase and we have yet another addition to our car-camping arsenal.

The weekend was spent doing the normal weekend at the cabin' things. A little bit of handgun shooting, a lot of eating, some card playing, a little bit of reading, some shotgun shooting. Jim and I went on a mini-hike around some of the property with tree identifying books in hand, giving tree identification a go. We were actually quite good at it and were able to identify the trees correctly where we were (the property owners had a forester survey the property years ago, so we checked the records).

Our excitement for the weekend came when Jim went to get some firewood for the campfire. He saw a snake! Jim really likes snakes. So he called me over and we both got to see it and take pictures. We were trying to identify the snake, too. We figured out it was a baby (neonate) snake. And there was some concern it was a rattler of some sort. The snake books were no help because neonate snakes sometimes can be vastly different in color and pattern from the adult stage. To the internet we went! I finally posted pictures on a snake forum and we got an answer! Jim found a neonate corn snake. A harmless snake that's quite pretty and good for vermin. Not to mention that it is quite a stunning snake color-wise. The owners were much relieved to know it wasn't a rattler. (I was too.)

Overall it was a very nice weekend in the mountains!