On a second night of road-cruising for snakes in the general area around Valley of Fires State Park where we were camping, my sister and I saw just this one snake. But it was certainly worthwhile, because the snake was such a beautiful one! Unfortunately I couldn't get my camera's external flash to work, and the snake was quite averse to the idea of sitting still, so I ended up only with poor photos like this one. (I later realized that one of the little metal connectors on the camera's hot shoe had somehow been knocked out, so I hadn't just lost the ability to use my camera due to some degenerative brain disease.)

The population of milksnakes in this area were formerly considered Lampropeltis getula celaenops (New Mexico Milksnake).