On the hunt for mushrooms.

It's a bit of a hike to get to our favorite mushroom hunting spots, but it's worth it.  It's a beautiful walk.  Retired Mountain Man and I planned our day around this hike and it was very enjoyable.  I will admit that it's getting to be a bit steeper than it used to be.  How does that happen?

We set off on our trip with both dogs, Maggie and Thompson, to help us out.

We are hunting for morels, but we're really looking for any edible spring mushrooms.

We found these brain mushrooms, Gyromita Esculenta.  They are edible and we have eaten hundreds of them.  Some say that the darker colored ones should not be eaten, but at our age, we'll take our chances.   They haven't killed us yet.

We finally found the morels we were really looking for.  They are some of the best tasting mushrooms of all.  It doesn't matter if you saute' them in butter or batter them and fry them.  They taste like candy.  Yum!

They are hard to spot.....

We found about half a dozen in one spot and headed for the next one.

Another lovely lady slipper on the way.

We found about 18 more morels and then decided to head to the creek.

What's left of the Peton Dam.

It was feeling pretty warm by now and the dogs had a dip in Cougar Creek to cool off.

It was time to head back up the hill and yes, we were happy to see any spots in the trail that were shady.   I kept looking for a trillium, but didn't see any on this trip.  Retired Mountain Man says there was one further down the road but unfortunately, I didn't walk that direction.

We broke out of the woods enough to get a view of Middle Mountain and Green's Ridge.

When we got home I opened our bag and it's a pretty nice bunch of mushrooms.  There's probably about three meals worth.  Tonight's menu will be grilled elk burgers with morels sauteed in butter. 

Nice sunset colors tonight.