Holy variety, Batman!

[Stick in Mud]

After a short little solo into the BWCA last week, I took my time heading down to Rochester yesterday to stop at, well, just about every state park or every spot along the Superior Hiking Trail that allowed easy parking (the drive took me almost 14 hours to complete).

The deadly storms that hit on Monday night dropped a lot of rain up there but thankfully none of the trees in my campsite (It was one of those nights when I'm really, really glad I paid good money for a tent), and there's now more variety to the mushrooms than I've ever seen. In my campsite alone there were ten different species--three russulas, three boletes, two amanitas, chaga, and lactarius.

On the way home, I found an incredible variety of edibles. Let me see if I can get them all: chanterelles, king boletes, lactarius thyinos, pigs ear, lobsters, oysters, chrome foots, and yellow and green russulas. (Maybe this much variety is normal for some of you; around my area, I've never come close to replicating it.) There were also a few other of the less-than-tasty boletes/suillus around, but I left them be. There are also plenty of bitter boletes out and about; I recommend sharing these with your friends and family who ask you to share your findings. It'll ensure that you can keep all your pickings for yourself in the future.

Alas, most of the chants were too small to bother picking, but someone in the next few days might come across hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. Lucky bastard.

It's time to get out in the woods, that's for sure!

[pushbutton]

Yeah, yeah, yeah....thanks for rubbing it in.....a little payback is always fun