Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am a Bay Area transplant who has lived in Northern California for a little over three years. My wife and i moved here from South Florida and we get out and road cruise every chance we get. It certainly has taken us some time learning about our new environment, and I am sure we have only grazed the surface on good ares to cruise and hunt. So far we have found a few area with healthy populations of C. oreganus and boy do we get excited everytime we find one. The disturbing thing is it seems people go out of their way to run over these snakes. With that being said we have taken it upon ourselves to uphold the time honored Herpers tradition of removing the snakes from the road and placing them in more suitable basking locations we deem acceptable( I know this really doesnt affect their mortality rate, it just gives us the warm fuzzies inside). Basically, to make a long story short, we were wondering if anyone knows of any streches of road that we can cruise in the area. We are not collecting, just photographing and hopefully saving a snake or two from becoming another road bump for ignorant Bay Area drivers.
Nick Wasilewski

unfortunately you are unlikely to get steered towards anyones spots...giving out locations is not something people do alot of these days because we have all heard the same line "not collecting, only taking pictures"....sorry if that is not the case with you but I figured you ought to know why nobody has responded to your post...

Oreganus are very easy to find in the bay area, use google earth and you can find all kinds of quiet backroads...
I lived up there for 25 years and found tons of them, they are in no danger of being extirpated by DORs so I would not spend much time "saving" them, better use of your time would be giving lectures at schools and the like to change people's perspective, or better yet tell them to watch my episode of Bay Area Backroads where I discuss rattlesnakes, and oreganus, in particular...
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Cheers
Lateralis
"I would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right"
Marion "Doc" Ford