I used to go snake hunting in Southern California. We'd find snakes, catch them, look at them, then let them go. The snakes we most commonly found were red racers in the Mojave, but I also found the occasional California king snake and Mojave green.
Like most young-adults, my friends and I were complete idiots, and I remember catching and playing with two different mojave greens (which we called diamondbacks, but wikipedia is telling me aren't). They're super-poisonous, but we thought we were indestructible, so just assumed we could safely handle them. We couldn't, and it was dumb to have ever tried, but no one ever got bitten.
I found a california king snake once while rock climbing. Got to the top of a short cliff, pulled myself up and wham! six inches in front of my face, there was a darned-big king snake. Scared the crap out of me, and I think it's the last time I decided that "that's not hard--I can climb it without any equipment."
Red racers are common, and we'd see them all over. They bite a lot, but little ones can't really hurt you, much.
The prettiest snake I ever caught was a nicely-colored, large garter snake that was just swimming along the Kern river while I was wading through the rapids. I picked it up, played with it, it made itself smell really bad, then I let it go. Wish I had pictures, but I don't.
