So, my friend Johnny and I are at Henry Ford's Rose garden pond netting goldfish. After 3 hours and 9 fish later, 2 little girls and their baby sitter come by and hang out with us for a bit. Somehow, she gets on the topic of snakes and says she saw one. The little girls chime in and say that they saw two. Immediately I'm rushing 1/2 mile to get to where they were. The area has many cliff along the rouge river, but even though they snakes were supposedly in abundance I saw none. However, two girls ahead of us stopped and pointed at something, and I asked what it was.
Snake number one, caught after 1/2 minute of plowing through brush. He looks JUST LIKE A maritime! Seeing that at the time I was somehow convinced it WAS a maritime, I kept him! Pics at the end. Further down the trail and at the falls I'm holding the snake and decide to head back to fishing. About 10 feet away was another snake! Grabbed it, a very fine specimen of T. s. s. with light brown-red coloration. Let'im go. A few more feet back down the trail and another garter! Another male with chocolate coloring and a vague stripe. Took me a moment to catch this one. Let'im go. A few minutes later and we're waiting to leave when a guy and his kids come up and ask me about the snakes. So a few seconds into the convo I hear a rustling behind me and turn to find ANOTHER garter, a skinny dark-brown specimen! So my day was incredibly productive! LEt that one go as well. I didn't have a camera, so I only got pics of Archibald after I got him home. :P

Kinda blurry but shows his colors. :P