Mike’s friend Nora was visiting and the they wanted to do something Pacific Northwesty. Amy and I invited them to go mushroom hunting with us.
Nora lives in Hawaii. She brought sandals and a bikini. Mike outfitted her in his extra clothing, including three pair of socks and boots four sizes too big. Nora is a good sport.
We left our gear at the lean-to and headed into the woods. Amy found the first mushrooms, Yellow Chanterelles, just a few steps from camp.
We found an abundance of mushrooms, some edible, like this Lobster
…and some that should not be eaten, like this presumably poisonous Amanita.
These Bird’s Nest fungi were quite decorative.
I really don’t know what these are. It looked as if this tiny lichen was fruiting with little, red berries.
We filled all our bags in short order, and headed back to camp. Amy started cleaning our mushrooms.
We had salami and cheese, apples, beer and wine. Mike brought out his flask of Wander Back single malt.
Mike and I gathered some wood and soon had a fire going.
While we were waiting for the fire to burn down to coals, I walked out behind the camp to cut some vine maple skewers. I wasn’t even looking for mushrooms when I stumbled across this patch.
Caught without my bag, I had to improvise.
We picked out a few of the choicest chanterelles to roast
After lunch, we went out across the road from camp to try our luck. It was brushier over there; I’m afraid it was hard going for Nora, wearing Mike’s giant clown shoes on her feet.
We found more lobster mushrooms. Most of the chanterelles on this side of the road were white, rather than yellow. Amy found a couple of hedgehogs and several really nice clumps of pigs ears,
I found a huge patch of large, white chanterelles. I called Amy over to help me harvest them, but she was busy with a patch of her own.
With our bags full again, we hauled our treasures back to the car.
Michael’s toque with an alder leaf pom-pom.
Before we left, we made sure our fire was dead-out.
Back at Mike’s we divided the plunder. It had been a good day.
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