Before I talk about today, let me go back to last night. We had our neighbors Skip and Mary come to dinner at 6 pm. Bob made his excellent Chicken Enchiladas. We had Coronas with our enchiladas. Mary and Skip brought over a bottle of Malbec, a wine from Argentina. We've never had it before, but I will be sampling it today. For dessert, we had an Easter cake that I found at Costco. It was decadent: chocolate cake with chocolate and vanilla mousse layers, a ganache frosting, and it was decorated like an Easter egg. Yummy stuff! Noom will have to wait a day!
Our conversation centered around travel. Funny thing, people who have RVs love to talk about travel. In this case, however, we talked about world travel as well. Kind of hard to take RVs to Australia, Argentina, and Europe, although it can be done for a price. We also wanted to talk to them about Alaska since they used to live there. We will be going to Alaska this summer, so we learned about all the animals to expect on the roadways: bear, elk, caribou, and moose. A very enjoyable and knowledgeable couple to talk to.
Today is Day 5 of National Walking Week. I planned on doing a 10k walk this morning. However, at 8 am it was already warm and humid with no cooling breeze. I decided to do the 5k walk instead.
After this 5k walk at Leon Creek/Mainland Trailhead, Susan Medlin (my BFF) is going downtown to check the 5k churches walk before our walk there tomorrow morning. There is so much construction in downtown San Antonio that it is good to re-check the route frequently. Susan is very conscientious!
The San Antonio Pathfinders Volksmarch Club hosted the walk this morning. Mike and Kathy Schwencke, Pat Gunter, and Ellen Ott were there when we arrived. My Event Book was almost full and I was able to buy a new Event Book from them.
Susan M. and I took off walking at a good clip. We saw Pink Evening Primroses, wild strawberries, and Prairie Verbena in bloom.
The Leon Creek/Mainland Trailhead bike path goes through woods for most of its length where we walked today. It was also cloudy until just before we finished walking.
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| Wooded with a paved bike path. Nice! |
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| A man-made structure in the woods. I think the sign says "UMBAS." |
During the last half-mile of our 5k walk, the sun came out. The temperature immediately jumped by five degrees. Boy, are we happy it didn't come out sooner than that! Just then, we came to the underpass for Bandera Rd. Shade!! I love all the bridge supports.
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| Bandera Rd. underpass. |
Life is crazy. We walk, and walk, and walk. Most times, not much super-exciting happens. We see birds, we chat, and we stay out of the way of bicyclists, runners, other walkers, and little green worms hanging from the trees on invisible silken threads. We may even see deer or armadillos. However, today we saw something a little more exciting!
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| Texas Coral snake on the Leon Creek/ Mainland Trail. |
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| This Coral snake was pretty close to an apartment complex! |
The saying goes, "Red touches yellow, kill a fellow. Red touches black, friend of Jack." You may have heard it if you were in the scouting program or studied herpetology. There are variations of this rhyme, but the meaning is the same: Stay away from snakes that have a red band that touches a yellow band. There are a few exceptions, but better safe than sorry!!
The snakes on which red touches yellow are in the infamous Elapid family, which also includes Cobras, Mambas, and Sea Snakes. We have Elapids in the United States.
Perhaps the best way to know if you will run into a Coral snake is to know where they live. The map below shows the natural range of our U.S. Coral snakes. If you don't live within one of the highlighted areas, you can rest assured that you won't run into one of these critters in your backyard.
The three types of Coral snakes in the U.S. are:
1. Eastern Coral (Micrurus Fulvius),
2. Texas Coral (Micrurus Tener), and
3. Arizona Coral (Micruroides Euryxanthus).
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| Image via Wikipedia. |
Elapid venom is drop-for-drop the most toxic of all snake venoms. It is predominantly neurotoxic meaning that it attacks the nervous system and will typically kill its victims by paralyzing the breathing muscles, resulting in asphyxiation.
The information above is from a website called Snake Buddies. I highly recommend that you read the whole article about U.S. Coral snakes. You will learn about misconceptions related to their bites, about the Coral snake that "farts," and much more. Frankly, I was fascinated!
So why am I telling you all this? Because on our 5k walk this morning, a Coral snake slithered along the bike path right next to us! Talk about paralyzing your breathing muscles...I didn't even have to get bitten to stop breathing for a second or two.
Thankfully, Coral snakes are not aggressive and will only attack a person if threatened (although there have been some unfortunate accidents). It continued its slow progress toward the side of the trail and we stayed far away from it. Although I must say, there could have been an unfortunate accident when a bicyclist almost ran over it. All that snake had to do was strike really fast and it could have bit that cyclist's ankle! I don't think the cyclist saw it.
We finished our walk and alerted the volunteers at the registration table about the snake. I showed them the pics and we all agreed it definitely was a poisonous Texas Coral snake. As of the time we finished the walk, 17 people had started walking.
On the way home, I stopped at the nearby Walmart for some veggies. On the way out the door, I saw this adorable Easter display of Dr Pepper.
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| Dr Pepper Easter display at Walmart. |
I got home at about 10:30 am. The day is young yet. Let's see what else today holds.
Well, it seems the day was holding a beautiful sunset in store. There's a storm to the south of us and these clouds rolled in this afternoon. Very unique color in the sky.
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| Tuesday evening's sunset. |
Tomorrow, I'll be doing the downtown San Antonio Churches walk.
