Your experience is very similar to my experience when I was five or six years old twenty years ago, which means it must be a species, but the number is very small. Unfortunately, there was no camera to take pictures. That's a real pity.

These two pictures are similar to the common snakes in our area (Jiaodong Peninsula). The snake dragons I saw in those years were similar in pattern color, but the pattern shape and distribution seemed different, similar to the picture below (because it was too old, I remember vaguely), and then a pair of dragon horns grew. I was not surprised when I was a child, because I saw them in the chicken coop in front of my neighbor's house, which was close to home. I thought there were many in the mountains (living at the foot of the mountain).