Watch where you step

We go for a Jeep ride tonight and decide to visit a few beaches in the area since it's a nice night.  The first beach I have not been to for a long, long time.  I used to spend many of my teenager years on this beach, as a matter of fact I skipped school one day with some friends and spent the afternoon swimming.  Funny story to go along with this beach skipping day.  We couldn't all not come to school because then the teachers would know we were skipping and call our parents so some of us didn't go at all and the others signed out at different times through out the morning.  Meanwhile those of us that didn't go to school had to hang out somewhere and not be seen by the eyes in the back of our parents heads.  So we tried to break into our brothers apartment - No such luck, we made lousy robbers, we couldn't get the window open and if we did I'm not sure who we were gonna shove through there and not alert the neighbors of something fishy going on.  Hummmm now where could we hide, my cousins and I were pretty creative when it came to hiding during a skip day.  We hid in the car wash with the doors pulled down, left to get the other girls and came back to the car wash to wait for the last group and off to swimming we went.  I'm not sure if we got caught that day or not, I got caught many times through my High School years.... good thing I worked for the attendance teacher :) 

So back to our Jeep ride.... we drive to another beach area and I drank a gallon of water within the last hour so now I have to go to the bathroom.  Just my luck they're closed, but maybe they keep the doors unlocked to the bathrooms so I walk up to the building and tug on the door..... nope locked up tight.  I turn to walk away and something catches my eye when I turned.  I start flapping my arms and yelling "OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG"  and again flapping like a chicken that was about to fly away "OMG, OMG, OMG".  John says stop OMG'ing and get your camera.  Oh yeah.... dang I had my little 50mm lens on so that means I have to get close.  I just want you all to know that the only reason I got this close was for you guys, I was squirming and chivering the entire time I was taking these 30 some photos. 

I just want you to know I almost stepped on this sucker, they serve food out of this building, people and small children hang out here.  Babies are pushed in strollers at this spot..... small dogs are on leashes, heck small dogs and babies I'm afraid for the big dogs and toddlers, heck with them I was afraid for myself right at that moment.

Wanna see it?

All the years I lived here I have never seen one of these things so friggin' huge, I'm telling you it was OMG huge!!

As we followed this thing all around the building John decides to stamp his foot and the head coils up and it's tail rattles...... I yell "It's a friggin' rattle snake", he says "it's not a rattle snake"...... stamps his foot again "can you not hear that sucker rattling, it's a friggin' rattle snake".  Well it got to the solid patio and had to cut across I decided to get creative and get close to it since it was heading away from me, I'll stay by the rattling tail.  Did I happen to tell you I still have my little lens on so I was this dang close.

"Okay let's go back to the Jeep".... as we are walking I'm grabbing onto John and say "you can bet your bottom dollar I won't be cutting across the lawn to get to the parking lot"!!

Just in case you were wondering how big he was..... I said he was at least 8 foot long and 6" in diameter.  Okay so for real he was, in John's words "a good 3 foot long and 1" in diameter" and it was a Pine Snake.