When I was a kid I use to hunt garter, water and brown snakes in the valley where I still live. We use to find wood turtles, box turtles and spotted turtles in the fields, streams and swamps that where everywhere. Now....the whole valley is developed. Housing developements, strip malls and the 2nd largest indoor mall in the country occupy the land once abundant with life.
When I was a teenager we used to go to South Carolina on field trips to look for all the famous reptiles Carl Kauffeld made famous in his books. Over the years I have seen more and more "No Trespassing" signs until today it is impossible to find anywhere down there you can legally get out of your truck.
I became an internet surfer when PC's became part of the modern world. I learned from other "like minded" people of other great places to herp. Since then I have been all over the country enjoying many of the great herping places that were still left. One of which, the beautiful grasslands of Carlsbad California, where you could find kingsnakes in the banded and striped forms, as well as gophersnakes and Helleri are now but a memory . We have developement to blame for that as the fields have been bulldozed for housing.
Over the last decade I have come to fall in love with west Texas. One of the last frontiers. I have been coming here, year after year with my girl Maureen, to herp. We love the desert habitat and all the animal life it supports. During this time we got engaged in Marathon texas at the Gage Hotel, got married and even returned to west Texas during our honymoon. One of the greatest things we've gotten from our trips is the friendships we've made. We now have friends from all over the country which we look foreward to seeing each year. My fears now are that Texas too, will become a place of the past. This time we owe it to the lawmakers and some underhanded politics.
So it is with a heavy heart that I post details of what may have been our best trip to west Texas. We have been slowly building an impressive library of video footage of our herping experiences and particularly in relation to the gray banded kingsnake from our multi-yearly trips to the transpecos. We have spent alot of time in Del Rio and the River Road / x-mas / Gap areas and now our plans for this year was to spend time in Sanderson. Our base camp was the epi-center of alterna culture.... The Outback Motel and our hosts Roy and Ruth Engledorf.
The first night we found ourselves changing plans at the last minute secondary to a big storm aproaching from the south . Our only option appeared to be to head north to Sheffield and Iraan. We found this little beauty at )13o hrs in Iraan.
The next morning , we found out over coffee and "show and tell" at the hotel that it never rained out in Langtry and everyone else also "scored"
" The Delaware Kid"
lower animal ; Wayne and Merdith/ the upper animal; Collin
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The next night we headed for Langtry. I"m always telling Maureen, who is the Q-Beam Machine on our team, to look low since I won't be able to get the high ones anyway. Well Moe doesn't listen and she spots a snake 30 feet up a cut, and it's an alterna! I can't climb the crumbling cut so I ran all the way down the cut and back up to above the snake. I hang down as far as I can and just out of reach I watch the snake crawl into a crevice....Gone! After a cat and mouse game of waiting. the snake appeared again and this time.....within reach!
The next morning over coffee and "show and tell" there were other alterna found as well....
Collin scored this Sandeson animal
and Roy got this sanderson animal..
The next night we went out to Sanderson again. We ran into Wayne and Meridith who were staking out a big cut they spotted an alterna on earlier but got away into a hole. They stayed there all night waiting for it to show again to no avail. We found our third animal in three nights a little later [2am] on a cut west of langtry.
Next morning cofee and....... Collin got another one!
The next night we went back to Langtry again and struck out. We saw Wayne and Meridith again at 0130. They had staked out the same cut from the night before and scored what appears to be the same snake that got away.
The following night we went up to Iraan to see if we could match up the female we found earlier in the week. we saw this on the way up....
we got rained out when we got to Iraan and made our way back to sanderson. We burned cuts east of town until 0245 when we spot tis little beauty ....
we usually shoot video with each find and we did with this one as well. when we finished "shooting" Maureen burned some more while I packed up gear.......She spots another alterna on the cut right behind us!
Our first Sanderson animals;
The next morning with coffee we find Stu found this gem;
Some other alterna found that week......Hans from 277
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Steve and Lance.....
Gerald and Jeffrey found tis very interesting animal....
Arron and Shannon.....
Some othe stuff we saw on cuts.....
Some of the sites around the hotel.......
Some of the people that made the trip so much fun........
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