Rattlesnake

Today we decided to hike the San Juan Loop Trial up on the Ortega Highway in Lake Elsinore with Mike & San.

Ortega Highway from Lake Elsinore to Capistrano

 We saw our first California rattlesnake. It was a Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake.  Here is a picture that Mike took and posted on his blog. He counted nine rings on the tail.

Southwestern Speckled Rattle Snake from our Hike

 While Mike was taking this photo, I was shooting a movie of this snake crawling away from us.

 It was a nice 2.2 mile hike But my pedometer said it was 3 miles.  The easy parts were down hill and flat, the hardest part was at the end as we had to ascend back up to the parking lot. We had a great day!