Treasure Hunting

The past few weekends Mark and I have hunted the woods in search of morels (and I'm speaking of morels the mushrooms, not some metaphorical reference to the restaurant!). We have had pretty good success, considering the short chunks of time we've actually allowed ourselves to look. The first weekend out we didn't find very many, but those that we did find were the "tastiest" according to Mark. These are small and grey-capped. Last weekend was our most prolific--3 lbs. in an hour! These morels were mostly the picturesque golden ones, but we did manage to pick a few with small, grey caps too.

Mark-on-the-search

Our treasure

We went out again this weekend to a different spot and found more, but this time they were much smaller and very dark brown, almost "burnt" looking. I did not bring my camera to document the look of these guys, though I wish I would have. We found almost 11 oz.

A "golden" morel vs.

A grey-capped

Although it can get a little boring when you're not finding any right away, once you find a morel it is very exciting. If you find one, you can usually find a few in the area and, if you are really lucky, may find a whole bunch that seem to magically "pop" out. It's great to have a good excuse to stay outside longer too; neglecting that laundry and yarkwork doesn't seem as bad if you're treasure hunting.

Can you see the morels?

How about now?

Well-hidden on the ground, they blend with their surroundings.

A cluster of 3 goldens

Mark likes to always keep an eye out for buck rubs too! Note the bark scraped off this small tree.

Of course, Mark and I are boneheads and have done our searching immediately after walking our dogs, so we've allowed the hounds to go with us while we are painstakingly looking for the highly camouflaged mushrooms. Needless to say, Mingo and Lily are bird dogs, not mushroom dogs and have been more of a nuisance than anything else. In fact, Mingo enjoyed taking advantage of our preoccupation with the ground by rolling around and consuming some fresh manure spread on a nearby farmfield. He got into quite a bit of trouble for this stunt.

Mingo is just wet from rain in this photo; it was the following weekend that he turned brown from rollin' around in manure.

Mark with Lily

Lily shakes off by Mark and Mingo