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A North Carolina Summer

Jefferson

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Note: the videos that accompany this post are on Bethany's channel (theherpinglizard) on YouTube, along with all our US herping content. Due to the length of this post, I'll split it up with corresponding pictures posted beneath each part of the story.

Bethany's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHerpingLizard.

This summer has been wild to say the least, and I apologize for not posting in a while. I graduated and got married in late May, and then started a new job in early July. To that end, June was book-ended by two trips to North Carolina, one to the mountains and the other to the coast.

After getting married on May 25th, Bethany and I headed down into North Carolina's Appalachians via I-81 south as twilight draped the Virginia hills in orange and blue, and night set in as we crossed into Tennessee at Bristol. From there, we traversed I-26 straight over the crest of the Blue Ridge and into NC, headed to an Airbnb near Hendersonville. After a stop at Cookout, we arrived, the dew clinging to the grass all around the cabin. This was by far the coolest Airbnb we have ever booked--it had a stream, a horse barn, a mountain view, and a practice golf course open to guests. Price: $35 per night. Incredible..

The next morning, we started out just before lunch into the mountains on stomachs filled with pizza in an attempt to find our great white whale: the Eastern Hellbender. Bethany had tracked down a specific locale to see them, tucked into the backcountry. Upon arriving, the stream looked to me like it would be too small to harbor these caudate beasts. Picturesque and clear, sure, but this stream looked more like a Shovelnose hangout than a spot where you'd expect to find 2-foot salamanders. We waded along, looking down at the rippling waters with polarized glasses, and intermittently, with goggles. We did not flip any rocks, as Hellbenders at this locale are active during daylight. For the first hour, we saw nothing. But about noon, we happened upon our beast. At first, it looked only like an oblong rock along the bottom of the stream--so well camouflaged! But looking under the water with goggles brought me face-to-face with our first wild Hellbender! As we photographed the beast and coaxed it into the shallows for better pictures, two rangers watched us from a distance, making sure we didn't plan on taking the Hellbender or holding it. It was reassuring that this site has such enforcement to protect the gorgeous creatures that live there.

After upwards of forty-five minutes of both getting pictures and taking turns looking at it crawl along the bottom with goggles, we kept going upstream. We saw three more Hellbenders in the next two hours, one that swam away as soon as I got underwater to look at it (this one was more tawny/reddish than the others and with larger black spots) and two that were more of a uniform tan color. These last two were seen in a quieter section of the stream, which was conducive to good pictures and video. We left in euphoria, got stuck in a traffic jam coming out of the mountains, and went back to play some golf, relax, and take in what had just happened. It's hard to absorb sometimes when such a monumental goal, like seeing a Hellbender, happens in an instant and then disappears into that amorphous jumble of memories we call "the past." I wonder if presidential candidates feel the same way when they finally win.

Anyhow, after a day of golf and lounging, the next day we headed into a different section of the mountains east of our Airbnb, these ones stony, drier, lower, and rockier. We hiked extensively at one spot, turning up some duskies and a nifty red eft, but nothing of great consequence. We went to a nice Italian restaurant overlooking Lake Lure and the surrounding mountains for dinner, and then night-herped from there. Our quarry was threefold: Carolina Green Salamander, Bat Cave variant of the Yonahlossee, and Blue Ridge Gray-cheeked. At our first stop, we found nothing but a lone Copperhead at twilight, but at a much smaller rockface with a garbage-like smell (from some trash deposited below it by locals, and I had joked all day that we'd get all three at "El Dumpo"), we started to have some luck.

Due to its bad smell and small size, we jokingly called the spot "El Dumpo," and it was a running joke of mine that we'd actually see all three there. After ten minutes, my flashlight hit something that didn't quite look like the moss around it. Could it be? It was. The figure of a baby Green Salamander, more yellowish than the ones I remember seeing in Alabama. This is a population isolated from the main TN/KY/WV/PA/AL/GA group, and has been in the works as a separate species for years. I am unaware of what the new common name for this isolated NC/SC population will be, but "Carolina Green" sounds reasonable enough to me. Five minutes later, we saw an adult of the same species. I was getting very excited, and by the time we spied a Blue Ridge Gray-cheek ten yards away crawling up the rock, I lost all composure. It was a mixture of uproarious laughter and joy, which only grew when Bethany rounded out our trifecta by finding a Bat Cave Yonahlossee. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. Thirty yards of rockface, four salamanders, three lifers. The cookout milkshakes tasted sweeter than any I'd ever had. A photo on the wall gave us a good chuckle. The image of a bear poking his head into a tent said, "Your tent is surrounded. I'm here to negotiate the terms of your surrender."

The next day, we played a little more golf and set off for the west, bound eventually for the ever-welcoming embrace of the Great Smokies and their immediate environs. Along the way, we stopped at a few little state parks and nature preserves, seeing a mountain pond full of newts, some duskies, and a snapping turtle. Climbing high into the mountains near Highlands brought the temperatures back down below 90 degrees, and I repeatedly thanked Bethany for talking me out of Florida as our destination. It would have been over 100!! In Southwest North Carolina, nothing much of herpetological note happened. North Carolina had been in drought, and due to that fact, when we tried to look for more traditional Plethodon in the woodlands, we had no luck. The leaf litter, even up at 4500' and above, was dry as cotton. However, staying on the NC side of the Smokies is always a nice treat regardless of salamander luck, and this time was no exception.

The area around Robbinsville had many signs for upcoming Cherokee tribal elections, and I wonder how those elections take place. Is there negative campaigning? Campaign contributions? Debates? So many unanswered questions. We tried unsuccessfully for Cheoah Bald and struck out with Junaluska and Shovelnose (though we did see a Watersnake catch a fish while looking for D. marmoratus), but had a great time at restaurants and just hiking with each other, before heading into Tennessee. After taking the Cherohala Skyway into SE Tennessee and listening to the brakes begin to squeak (which is disconcerting at 6000'), we tried for Junaluska and Tellico once more at low elevation and visited a few waterfalls, just passing the time sitting on the rivers' edge. We waited until twilight to shine some rockfaces, but found nothing that night except one juvenile Copperhead. With that, we headed into the valley along I-75. The next morning, we got our car repaired at a small shop where I read a book about Mikhail Gorbachev (an unlikely place for that book to be sure), and then we headed back to Virginia. But on the way, we stopped in extreme Southwest Virginia, at the very edge of Shovelnose range, to try one more time for the most elusive desmog in the East. And we were not disappointed.

As afternoon wore on and storm clouds rolled in from our west, a gurgling mountain stream feeding a trout river, about ten feet wide and a foot deep, yielded Bethany's coveted Shovelnose. The trick was that one person would flip a large rock in the stream's center, and the other would hold the net down to the bottom of the stream in front of it. Shovlnose, unlike other desmogs in Appalachia, actually prefer being in several inches of water or more, and make hay by eating the aquatic invertebrates on the undersides of rocks. Thus, you can't find them just by rock-flipping on the edge, and rock-flipping in water a foot deep that's moving is futile--you'll never see a four-inch, rock colored-salamander wash downstream. It was a gorgeous little desmog, with the classic dark brown and gold coloration and lethargic movements. What a nice drive back to the Shenandoah Valley. We thought that our travels were over until our move to Missouri, and that we'd have the next five weeks to settle in as a couple. As it turns out, we were wrong. Pictures will be posted below, and please read the next installment of the post. I hope you enjoy the story, and happy herping!
 

Jefferson

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Pictures! Included are two of our Hellbenders, Shovel-nosed, Green, Bat Cave, Blue Ridge Gray-cheek, Copperhead, and red eft.
 

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Jefferson

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More pictures! These are of us playing golf, the campaign signs, and scenery.
 

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Jefferson

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PART 2

Part way through our month in Virginia, it became apparent that my job would begin July 8th, and we had to leave July 1st as per agreement with landlord. So, we were given what I euphemistically call an "involuntary vacation." My family was kind enough to come down on my dad's week off to help us pack our things in storage, and as a last send-off/last family vacation, we thought it'd be fun to spend some time in the coastal plain of Eastern North Carolina, especially seeing as my younger brother Nolan had not seen several of the more common Deep South snakes.

We started out into the Deep South by crossing the Blue Ridge near Lynchburg and then heading south and east through the VA Piedmont. The car thermometer steadily climbed from 90 to 99 as we headed south and east to a riverine spot rumored to have the endemic Neuse River Waterdog. In other seasons, the spot is probably ideal for them, but our seasonality for this species was way off. No leaf packs were present in the river, and it proved only a decent place out get out and stretch our legs (and for the dog to wade around and get a drink). From there, we continued south and east into the Croatan National Forest area as large thunderheads built all around us from the humidity of the day, but dissipated before sunset. We met up with Bethany's cousin Emma and her significant other for some Mexican food, who both hail from the NC Crystal Coast area.

A road cruise that night turned up little, likely on account of a weeks-long drought and abnormally hot weather, but we were advised by Emma's boyfriend of a construction site pond that he worked at, where green treefrogs and water snakes were abundant. A stop by that pond turned up some green treefrogs in the shrubs on the edges of the construction site but no snakes. We also found Bethany's lifer Pinewoods Treefrog. These treefrogs, as someone who grew up around Spring Peepers, look to me like the fat, southern, Trump-supporting cousins of our Spring Peepers. The body shape is about the same, the markings on the back similar, and the background coloration similar. But Pinewoods live in much different environs and are much larger.

The next two days, I helped my brother with history homework and we hung out watching movies in my parents' motel most of the day, and we herped by evening cruising. This didn't turn up much of anything those two days except a green snake, but we did get to visit an ocean beach, where we waded in the waves, tasted sea salt, and watched people catching crabs. Our dog Noble, who had never visited an ocean before, tried to drink the seawater but recoiled in confusion when he tasted it. It took him three tries to get the point!

The day before Independence Day, things turned around in a hurry, though. Rain was forecast for that afternoon, and the herps seemed to know it. Bethany and I tried a salamander spot early in the morning and came up empty, but on our way to my family's motel, we cruised a couple green snakes, several anoles, a pair of box turtles, saw a basking Banded Watersnake sitting on a limb over a blackwater pool, and cruised the lifer of the trip: Eastern Kingsnake!! As we cruised through the longleaf pines, a snake came into view, with white markings on a dark background. Bethany said, "Oh my goodness, is that a Diamondback?" It wasn't, but for me, an Eastern Kingsnake was just as good! I'd never seen any subspecies of kingsnake before, and this beauty was a specimen to behold. What a sleek, solid snake it was. Nolan was disappointed to hear that he missed a couple lifers in favor of sleep, but the nighttime would more than make up for it.

We started out headed south around lunchtime, bound for a spot rumored to be good for gopher frogs, swamp snakes, and mud snakes during heavy rains. We made a few side stops along the way, including at Salvation Army to do some impromptu clothes shopping, and by the time we reached the entrance to our spot, it was raining in sheets. However, the gamelands were closed for the season!! I was a bit miffed, to say the least, that one of our best spots was seasonally closed with no way to access its interior. In a moment of decision, we agreed to head back toward the Croatan, where we knew the rain was still coming down and we had plenty of swampy road to cruise. It paid off.

Within fifteen minutes of grabbing some Wendy's and starting into the forest, we cruised an Eastern Cottonmouth and a couple of mud turtles. We also heard what we think were probably Little Grass frogs calling from the ditch, but we couldn't get our eyes on any to confirm that. In the ensuing two and a half hours, we saw a greenish rat snake (a yellow/black hybrid), a bright red garter snake, DOR Red-belly Watersnake, a few Banded Watersnakes, a boat load of mud and box turtles, and my first Narrow-mouth toads! These toads were everywhere on certain parts of the road, and I think we ended up sighting at least 50. With some wind at our backs, we pressed on to our south to a spot rumored to have a productive board site that's easy to find.

A little after midnight, my brother, Bethany, and I ventured into the park on foot a little ways to try to find the board site. We were unsuccessful in that endeavor, but did see a Squirrel treefrog and an Eastern Spadefoot in a rocky drainage area. The next objective was to get Nolan his first wild alligator, but that was complicated by the fact that, as we drove west through the fog draped over the coastal plain, we were running well ahead of schedule to reach our alligator spot by sunup (we alternated drivers and sleep in order to avoid paying exorbitant fees for a July 4th motel room).

Arriving at our alligator locale around 4am, we shone for the beasts and saw several, but that was a poor substitute for seeing them in daylight. So, we tried to get an hour or two of sleep as we waited on sunrise at a nearby road pull-off. This didn't work at all, but we did succeed in killing all the time between us and sunrise. As the orange sun crested the pines, we went to get some grub and then headed back to the swamps, and my brother, on July 4th just after sunrise, saw his first wild alligator, about a nine-footer. As American as apple pie and baseball...From there, we headed to the Sandhills region of the state to crash for the rest of the day, and crash we did.

The next morning, Bethany and I did some fruitless cruising, and then we hung out for most of the day. We went to a Chinese buffet for lunch, where service was, well…nonexistent. The food and prices were good, but none of the workers spoke English, and seemed not to understand basic questions about buffet rules. The best part about the restaurant, however, was the panda painting on the glass seat dividers. There were two pandas, one looking expectant and happy, the other dejected and anxious, looking at the ground. My first impression was that the two pandas were playing dice, and the happy panda was about to win unless a miracle for the second panda happened.
Anyway, that night, we went out after a rain into the Sandhills, visiting a pond rumored to have Oak toads. This night, we had no luck with them, but did see a gorgeous Barking treefrog, which my mom particularly liked. The final day of herping, Bethany and I took Nolan to our Broken-striped Newt pond, which did not disappoint, and then we all swam and hung out at a local campground where Bethany and I stayed. The lake at the campground was filled with Yellow-bellied sliders. A final salvo before we headed back to the Shenandoah Valley saw us road cruise for frogs and try for Pine Barrens Treefrogs. We did not see that species, but did get several Spadefoots, and a canebrake seepage in the sandhills had an Eastern Lesser Siren sitting in it come twilight. Unfortunately, the creature scurried before we could get pictures or video, but Bethany and I got a good look at it.

It was a fitting end of the trip: another lifer, another aquatic salamander only found in the Deep South, and without pictures, a good reason to someday return to the NC Sandhills. And with that, my family went home to Michigan, and Bethany and I headed to DC for my training. We’re now in Missouri, settled down, and doing some Ozark herping. Updates on that to come… Thanks for reading, and happy herping! Pictures below!
 

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Jefferson

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More pictures! Banded Watersnake, Squirrel treefrog, Narrow-mouth, Spadefoot, goofy sign in the Sandhills, Redbelly Watersnake, mud turtle, Alligators at dawn on July 4th.
 

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Jefferson

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More pictures. Redbelly Watersnake, mud turtle, box turtle, DOR red garter, various combinations of us at the beach in NC.
 

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Jefferson

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Also forgot the most important picture: Bethany and I getting married!!!
 

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