The Fungus Among Us

Today started out bright, beautiful, and early. Not as early as some I am sure, for I was not on the hunt for elk, but mushrooms. I woke up knowing that I wanted to look for mushrooms and make a soup. The harder part was deciding where to go. It has been a long time since I planned a hunt for fungus, I usually enjoyed picking when I came across it. I decided to go and explore the new road where they are building the new community college. I drove it a week or so ago for the first time, and I remember noticing the abundance of trails surrounding the new construction. I started exploring some of the logging roads around the new college at about 8 AM. I was excited that I had a good start on the day. I have been sleeping away my last few weekends. I parked in front of a four wheeler trail and started heading out. Just minutes into the walk we came across what I believe to be false morels. That was exciting, even though there is no value in them at all. I have never found either real or false morels before, they tend to be so camouflage, as this one was. I guess I have to admit that I did almost step on it before noticing.

Pretty sure this one is called the Black Elfin Saddle.

It is nice to see mushrooms at work recycling the forest detritus. These Sulfur Tufts (I think), though small, are doing their part. Very cute.

Great octopus tree. The trail ended here and opened up into a hill that looked like it headed east over to Idaho Point.

I think Daisy appreciated not trampling through sticks for a minute. This open field had a great view, but I didn't enjoy it for long, I was still on a mission.

This slug was pretty large. It looked like he was making his way over to this mushroom.....

Thought for a split second that I had found my first edible mushroom! I knew instantly that it was a bolete, but further observing informed me that it was not a King Bolete, but an Admirable Bolete. I left if for the slug, and continued.

Many mushrooms on this trail were working hard breaking down the forest floor. This one in particular reminded me of something that Mario would jump around on at the end of a level.

Daisy is wondering who Mario is. Well, it was a very fun walk, but after at least an hour, we came up with three mushrooms.

I still made her pretend to be proud.

And she did it well.

Could we be in the ocean right now?? Looks like coral. How appropriate that it is a type of coral mushroom.

I am still out by the college, but I have moved onto another trail. After a quick ten or so minutes, a very overgrown trail opened up into a humongous open field. It was quite surprising! The field was covered by the cutest little puff ball mushrooms. The author of the link uses the term as openly as I do.

Close up these mushrooms don't look like they have stems at all. I smashed one of them open and it was kinda moist in the middle. Not powdery like I had imagined. They must not have been mature yet. They covered this large open space, at least where it wasn't flooded. I made my way around this open field and found a few places where the grass may have been drowning.

Must have walked right by these guys on the way to the open field. All three were good sized, but the one below blew me away.

This by far is the largest Amanita that I have ever seen! It had to have measured at least eight inches in diameter. It was insane. A lot of poison was in that mushroom.

I walked back to the car, and moved onward. This was growing on the side of the road on 98th street. They were way taller than the first coral fungus. I stopped where there was a pull off and looked like a trail ahead. It was pretty steep, but much less forest litter. Daisy sniffed everything, so she was way behind me. I didn't bring my paper sack or anything, I didn't think I was really going to find anything. So I came around a big stump and looked behind it, and there it was, the first good patch!

Finally, I found a patch! I'd say I had a few miles under my belt now, I think I deserved a little jackpot.

That was my first pile, and I had three more in the car. I now had enough to make my soup, so I was happy. I scooped them all up and used my t shirt as a basket and started back down the hill. On the way I spotted a few more in a hole under a downed tree......

Following the trail behind this fallen tree, led me to another larger patch. I was a little too excited to take any pictures. I had to go back to my car and retreive my paper sack, my shirt would not do for this amount of shrooms. I had my paper sack over half full by the time I was done with the second patch. I had more than enough now to make the soup that I wanted.
This deer almost gave me a heart attack! I never thought she would stick around to let me take her picture. But she did, I got quite a few.

I had to show off my mushrooms to someone. Although Jennifer wasn't too impressed, Santos sure thought they were cool.

Mom said it was like a flower.

I left Jennifer's house and make my way out to Logsden. Ashley and mom were sure willing to help me make the soup. They were very, very helpful.

Ashley managed to help with the soup, and still work in the store. She is so talented.

The soup was really good. I let Daisy out of the car, and never did get her into the back room. I made sure to tell her not to come inside the store. I don't know if that pissed her off or what, but I guess she didn't want to make it easy for anyone else to get inside either.

Full Moon Tonite

Tonight the moon is full. I can't see it because it is raining so hard. Oh wait, I am inside. How can it be raining so hard when I am inside? The rain has magically found its way onto my roof, through the shingle thingies, then out and through the little squares on my ceiling. Good old H2O has found four different paths with the least resistance to combine and pour out of low points. I am using that pot that grammie gave me more than I ever thought I would. The drip and the drop makes me have to pee more than usual, I think. Now I'm just being whiney.

I don't think I have to like corn

I remember in one of my million biology classes that I took one specific moment when I had a minor freak out; I just read an article that brought me back to the same situation.

The class was discussing something that had to do with trophic levels or something along those lines. At the time I was swimming every day, and running, and staying way more active than I had ever been. I still wasn't what anyone would call thin, I simply ate more, and I was happy with that. Looking at the top of the trophic pyramid on the note page on the PowerPoint handout I remember realizing I was the top carnivore, or the final consumer. It blew me away that I could be so wasteful, when so much energy before me had to be produced and converted before it was even usable to me. Then all I do is pig out, then go burn off the energy doing wasteful things, it wasn't like I was mowing a lawn or anything. Running on a treadmill had never sounded so stupid to me before. In the next five minutes or so I decided that if I wanted to continue eating so much, I had to start only eating directly above the producers. I was only going to burn my energy to fufill my basic needs and do great things for the earth; no longer would it be wasted on cardio. My crazy freak outs don't last long though. By the time the lecture was over, I was already thinking about how wonderful a late night swim followed by some bacon would be. This article made me want to go back to that.

Corn is one of my least favorite vegetables, but I suppose I can start eating Whopper Jrs. again, and I can get my intake of veggies!!!! It just took an entire cow and its carbon footprint to convert into an energy source that I found suitable. I am so selfish, I am going to be healthier........

Yah right, like I would quit eating cheese! Or milk, or candy.......... I think I can live without a whopper jr. though

Longest Beach Walk Ever

The urge to find agates flowed through our veins in the morning when we woke up, until the time we made it to Lost creek, just after noon o'clock. We had our rain pants and jackets, Daisy had a few extra aspirin. I can't think of anything that could have made us more prepared. Blue sky was peeking through the semi grey clouds. Jered is looking off far into the distance, predicting the oncoming weather.


There is a short pathway from the parking lot at Lost Creek to the beach. From the access we headed north. As far as we could see, there was no sign of rocks at all, agates would be even more scarce than that. We remained hopeful, committed to our plan to walk up past Jered's house to an open field and then make our way back to the car via the beach. Daisy was acting more excited than I had seen her in months, possibly longer, I figured she would be up for anything. So we started walking.

These roots were stretching across a ten foot cave on the sandstone cliff above the beach. It looked quite fascinating. I am curious to know if the roots grew like that, or if a landslide, or land shift created the cave and stretched the tree from its roots. The tree didn't look stable at all, dangling off the edge of the earth.

The wind was blowing us down the beach. It made it very nice for the walk there, but the way back was going to be a whole different story. So far it hadn't rained on us and our rain pants. It was very nice to have coffee to sip on.There is a ton of fossilized shells on this beach. Since rocks were few and far between anyway, I was extra sensitive to anything that even looked like it was shiny. The shells would get me every time. Stupid, tricky, shells.

Daisy is having a blast. The sand is all wet where we are walking, so no worries about the wind blowing sand in her eyes.

This beach has so many little caves!! This one was big enough to fit a person in. No agates located inside though.

It is strange what the ocean can do! It looks as if the ocean just took a bite out of the cliff here. I wonder if there is different, more brittle mineral there that would make it easier for the ocean to take it out and away. Or...there could be some crazy canals out in the deeper intertidal zone that can create greater water velocity that is more water like punching a hole in the cliff. However and why ever it is, they are all along this walk, much more abundant than the other local beaches.

We have made it to a creek close to Jered's house. He called it Theel Creek, or something like that. I do not have my extra tuffs on, so instead of trampling through the water, I go to cross the less than one foot creek on a pile of drift wood. Seems to me to be way more dangerous than living with wet feet for a short while. But having wet feet sucks so bad.......so onward and across.

There was a lot of twisty shaped driftwood along this creek. The sand was still so high that some wood was almost completely buried, with just some branches sticking out.I got a picture of one of the few red rock crab carapaces on the beach. It must be molting time, there were tons of Dungeness shells all over. We had a very small amount of very small agates in our agate bag. The wind was still blowing us to our destination.

Looks like someone had just sawed the branches off this log. Daisy even thought it looked strange.

This log was right in front of the destination field. We walked up the creek to take a break from the beach and have some grass under our boots for a minute. It wasn't long before we were returning to the beach, for the long walk back. I saw this cute little caterpillar, barely, I almost stepped on him.

On the way back the wind was blowing against us. It was noticeably harder to walk. Daisy was still doing good, her limp was slight if any. Coffee was gone, water was none, lunch was sitting, waiting for us in the car. It still hadn't rained on us, since we were wearing our rain pants. We saw people down where we thought may have been the beach access we used. They looked smaller than ants at the time, and it was going to be forever before we were going to get there. Finally, we made it back to the car, it still hadn't rained on us at all. Our agate bag was still practially empty. I hadn't gotten my fair intake on mushroom observing for the day, so I wanted to go into the woods and look around. How good would a mushroom soup be? Super good.

Definitely not eating that, but it sure is pretty. We ate lunch just as the sun was exiting the woods. What looked like a trail ended twenty feet from the car, but it ended with an open flat spot, that was perfect to eat on.

This skinny little salamander wanted to eat with us. I can't blame him, he could use some extra bulk for the winter.

We stopped and looked at this beautiful house on our way back to the beach to watch the sunset. I especially liked the round window in the front.

Another beautiful sunset on the Oregon coast.

There it goes.

Say "cheese"

Pelican Update

The pelican was gone the next morning. I went to check on him even before I turned my computer on. It was quite a stormy day on the coast. I saw many other pelicans heading back down south on my way to work. I am hoping he found a group that was doing the same and headed back down south with them. It was excellent getting to observe these amazing creatures for such an extended time this year, but I am sure for their sake, they are anxious to get back down where the weather is much better for their little hollow bones. Maybe next time he migrates north, he will stop by the park and say "hi" again. I can only hope.

Stray Pelican

Crazy wild animal loose at work today! Actually, it was a super cute pelican. Some hippies in a big bus came into the office around 10 or so this morning. They said that there was a giant pelican swimming in the water behind their site. While I was attempting to visualize the water that was supposedly behind their site, co-worker Jon spit out, "oh yes, sometimes when they get tired they swim upstream to get fresh water to drink." Sounded good to me, although I am still unaware if that has any truth to it. The hippies left a few hours later, I wouldn't have been surprised if they had taken the pelican with them. I tried to avoid going out to check out the bird, so I managed to stay busy most of the day. By 2:30, I had to check to see if the pelican was still there. If it was just thirsty, I would have thought it may have moved on by then. That is what I was hoping, I hate seeing injured, helpless animals. I was not so lucky today.

It was not hanging out in the water anymore, just balled up on the shore. I couldn't and wouldn't get any closer to it, although I was curious to see if I could make it move. Its eyes followed me the whole time, but the rest of its body didn't move at all.

Looks like it is sitting on a nest, although the website that I link at the beginning shows a picture of their nesting grounds, and it doesn't look like this. The first website, and another that I read stated that they only come up this far in Oregon (and can go as far north as BC) after they nest and are all done with the mateing stuff.
So that is probably not it either, an injury is seeming more and more likely.

I checked on it again before I left to go home for the day. It was still in the same place, but it had turned around so it was facing east instead of west.

I will have to check on it again tomorrow. I hope nothing gets to it in the night.