Account by: Jim Scharosch

Today was one of those days. Sometimes on a trip like this you spend time driving around looking for areas to work, and you just don't find them. We spent most of the day driving around the twisting mountain roads looking for junk to turn and found pretty much nothing. It wasn't a lot of fun.

We did find this Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina).

Mike, stalking his elusive prey

Mike will go to whatever length is necessary to get the shot!

We also found a few salamanders, here is another Dusky Salamander (Desmognathus fuscus) I found.

They are kinda neat salamanders, even though the coloration is kinda drab. They are also hard to photograph, being so dark and shiny.

After an entire day of driving and finding pretty much nothing, we decided to head back to camp. We took a slight detour for a beer run, and along the way I spotted some junk about five miles from our campsite. After getting our beer, we stopped and under a large section of an old building. We found this double, an Eastern Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) and a Black King (Lampropeltis g. nigra). The milk was in shed, and was pretty dismal.

The king was smaller, and was really pretty.

Just to prove it wasn't a pushover....

It was funny how it worked out, driving all day to find stuff, and ending up finding stuff right by our campsite.

Another note on the same theme, earlier in the day we had gone back to an area where Mike had found the Black Mountain Salamander the day before. Jeff wanted to find one himself, so he worked the rocks in the creek, but to no avail. When we got back to camp, Jeff flipped a few rocks in the stream right in our campsite, and found his salamander under a rock not fifty feet from his tent!