Hello everyone!

I reached a milestone in my life this past week, and that was celebrating 5 years with my partner Scott. We went on our first date in the summer time in 2010, when we both worked at a now-closed Macaroni Grille, and were together from that first night.

Now, five years later, we are happier than ever, and decided to celebrate this anniversary with a hike.

This hike is called “River Place Nature Trail,” and I found it a few weeks ago by googling hikes in my area. Who would have known it was hidden just a few miles north of us?

At the start of the hike, Scott and I challenged ourselves to keep an eye out for the inhabitants of this nature trail, and Scott made the absolutely ludicrous guess that we would see ten different animals. Um, no way. There are ducks, swans, and turtles in the pond, but how many more could we see?

It turned out we saw way more than ten, including the animal I hope to never cross… The animal I have already somehow run into FOUR times since moving to Texas six years ago. We saw a snake! More specifically, a coral snake. How is it that I have seen so many snakes since moving here? One unidentifiable brown one, a garter snake, a rattlesnake (an event so scary I couldn’t go back into the Greenbelt alone for months), and now a coral snake.

Cue very terrible iPhone shot of the snake:

These are definitely poisonous, although you’d have to basically lay down and let it bite you to death to cause any real damage. I had spotted it while we were on our way back. It was making its way off the path into the cedar forest. As one of my favorite professors once said, “Humans think that animals respect paths the way that we do, like they know not to go on them. Wrong! Snakes don’t care about paths! Snakes will go anywhere they want!”

Other than the snake, the headline of the hike was the swimming. It was the first time in my life that I swam in the natural springs of Austin. Sure, I’ve checked out swimming pools and such, but I’ve never waded in while hiking the greenbelt.