Mushroom Adventure

For our Saturday Mushroom Adventure, we, Jim and Diane and Terry and I, decided to take the 4 wheelers up the Hess Road to the top to scope out the mushroom hunting. Jim and Diane had found a few up top earlier and so we decided to give it another try. This pic is of Jim and Diane coming up the road. It doesn't LOOK to bad, see the switchbacks....


This is a view of Oxbow from Oregon side on Hess Road.


Jim and Diane coming 'round the corner. A little easier to see the steepness of the road.


My view from the back seat. It is a CLIMB to the top! But a beautiful day to do it.

We found mushrooms of all varieties at first, not many Morels. This is a picture of a cauliflower mushroom, they are edible and this one wouldn't be too bad, but most of the time they come up full of dirt and pine litter and are super hard to clean.

We finally got into some good Morels. We would jump off the 4 wheeler and begin picking. It was great fun. Not bad sized 'shrooms either.

When we got home we divided the 'booty' and got to cleaning them. Notice the difference in the color of some of them. I guess there are white and brown morels.
Here is a little 'Wiki' knowledge for you about the 'shrooms.

Morel
Morchella conica, a black morel, in Poland
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Fungi
Division:	Ascomycota
Subdivision:	Pezizomycotina
Class:	Pezizomycetes
Order:	Pezizales
Family:	Morchellaceae
Genus:	Morchella

As a bonus for the trip we were on top and jumped off to pick mushrooms again and we could hear elk chirping in the trees just out of view. We maneuvered around and saw a whole herd of cows with calves that we had disturbed. They chirped and squeaked and began picking up to move, so we watched as they filed out of the wallow area and disappeared into silence and the thickening forest. AWESOME!!! Made our whole trip!! We took a few odd turns, had to turn around when the trails ran out and made it home by around 8:00 that evening. (don't you just love the longer days).