Hiking The Tandy Hills With Snakes & Four Loko

Hiking the Tandy Hills is such an educational experience for me. Often in very unanticipated ways.

Like today.

In several locations in the Tandy Hills someone has decorated a branch with an empty beverage can. It was a can unfamiliar to me.

I examined one of the cans, up close, to see the beverage was called Four Loko. 23 1/2 ounces with 12 percent alcohol mixed with Guarana and Taurine, which are stimulants. I think caffeine might also be in the mix. Which is also a stimulant.

When I was back at my computer I Googled "Four Loko" and was surprised to learn it was in the news.

Not in the news due to being overly consumed on the Tandy Hills, but for being overly consumed at two Universities on opposite sides of the country.

New Jersey's Ramapo College and Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, in my old home state.

Central Washington University is where I graduated from. It was strange to Google for info and have that college pop up. Pop up due to nine freshmen requiring hospitalization after drinking Four Loko, along with other booze.

I need to go to Wal-Mart to get milk in a bit, along with a returning of some books to the library, which, miraculously, is open. I am going to look for Four Loko at Wal-Mart.

I forgot to mention. The picture above of the Four Loko can was taken on the Tandy Highway. As soon as I stuck the camera back in my pocket, two humans popped in to view. Startling me. Human encounters are rare on the Tandy Hills.

I chatted a bit with the humans. I think I startled them too. It was a guy and a girl pair of humans. This was their first time on the Tandy Hills. And they were new to the area. I told them they were going to have a lot of fun figuring out the maze of trails and finding all of them.

Before the human encounter I had another snake encounter. I was not fast enough, again, to get a picture. This snake encounter was near the bottom of the south trail that takes you down Mount Tandy to the Tandy Highway. It was a green snake, with darker green markings, about 2 feet long.

Ironically, just yesterday, when I hiked the wild west side of the Tandy Hills, I did so because the temps were cool, thus, I erroneously thought, slowing the movement of any slithery reptilian creatures. I do not hike on the wild west side of the Tandy Hills when it's HOT.

The temperature was 70 when I left here to go hiking. So, I guess I learned today that cold-blooded snakes can move fairly fast at a lower temperature than I realized.