Gopher snake in Sibley

When I got down to the first labyrinth in Sibley, there was a lady down there walking through it carefully, several times. I respectively stayed out of her way and scouted out good places to get a picture of the whole labyrinth without having my super wide angle lens with me. Eventually she left the labyrinth and headed back up the trail and I walked into the labyrinth. After 10 or 15 minutes, I left myself and found the same lady just a few yards away looking a bit distressed. “There’s a snake!” she shouted to me. I made my way up to her while she informed me the snake refused to move off the trail despite the fact that she had TOLD IT TO many times, and she wasn’t willing to pass the snake. So I checked it out and found a lovely, though lazy, gopher snake hanging out on the trail. “It’s a gopher snake,” I reassured the lady, “he’s not venomous.” “I don’t care!” she exclaimed, “I’m not walking past it! Why won’t it move?” Well, maybe because you’re not the boss of it? So I put myself between the snake the and lady and stretched my arms out as if to create a shield (because I’m hilarious) and finally she said, “well, I guess that will do if you aren’t afraid of it” and very quickly raced past me. As soon as she was gone, I squatted down in front of the snake and took some pictures. I really need to start carrying my macro lens; I could have gotten better pictures. The snake had no reaction, but it did finally slither off after a few minutes. I was happy to spend some time with it though.