snakes alive!

Sunday morning the bus pulled out at 9 am for St Mary's City. The first capital of Maryland. The 10K was taking place at the old city, now an interpretive park. I had been up since about 5:15 working in my class.

We arrived in St. Mary's and were greeted by the Freestate Happy Wanderers. The park was closed, but the FHW had permission to use it, and made arrangements for the bathrooms to be open. When they boarded, we were told to use the bathroom on the bus, because the park had no power from a storm the night before!

We got our instructions and did the "city" section of the 5K first. Why I am holding a roll of fat in my hand in the picture, I have no idea!

It was a cool place, and we spent more time being tourists and not enough being walkers. It took about and hour and a half to do the 5K. We got turned around a couple of times.

Highlights of the first section included "The Dove" a tall ship—and an ospry nest. We had seen several of them on the cruise last night also.

After coming up from the ship we headed thru an old cemetery on the campus of St Mary's College of Maryland.  Then back down the hill to find Cross Point Cove. There the instruction were a little vague, and we met up with Sue and Lou (last pix) from the FHW. We spend most of the rest of the hike together, getting lot and found.

Bonnie was in the lead for this hike, and found this birdhouse. She used my camera to take a picture. As she did, a snake slithered out. You can see the bulges in his body where his meal was sitting. Not sure if he got the eggs or the babies. But her got something. He also looked like he used that pole a lot!.

Sue and Lou moved on, as we explored the statehouse gallows. We continued to follow the instructions which took us into the woods. Again, Bonnie, the snake finder, was in the lead. Sh stopped dead in her tracks. Another snake. We waited for him to go back into the forest. (We heard at the start/finish there was another one in a birds nest in the barn.)

We had about an hour left, and didn't think we could finish the second 5K. So we decided to walk for 25 minutes, then turn around and come back. It probably wasn't necessary. We waited about fifteen minutes for walkers who were still in the woods.

Our final stop, before retuning home, was the AnnMarie Sculpture Garden. I could have spent much longer there.