Our hot weekend continued with a visit to a local Metro Park – Gallant Woods – that was holding a ‘Mushroom Hike’. Lead by Kari, one of the Education leaders from the park service, we wandered through the woods for an hour while she and others spotted various types of mushrooms.
Our group was small, with Kari and another family who was into foraging for mushrooms, making it very educational.
Most of the mushrooms were quite small, but still very interesting.
We found interesting growth on trees.
A red one on a small twig.
Mushy ones on another dead tree.
It was fascinating how when you start looking closely how many different types there are. Much time was spent explaining how difficult it is to see the difference between poisonous ones and those that are edible.
Kari would often pick them to give us a closer look.
When you looked closely the details are amazing.
One large tree had them growing all the way up the 50′ tall tree.
While you are supposed to leave the mushrooms where they grow for others to enjoy, we were permitted to keep some since Kari picked them as part of our tour.
Across the road is the original homestead complete with a restored 1930s farm house.
The entire county parks system is featuring flight this year so one of the barns had a great exhibit with model planes.
The exhibit’s planes were very impressive.
We thoroughly enjoyed our hike with Kari, and the time spent with the other staff and volunteers afterwards in the farm house. The staff was even kind enough to share some mushroom quiche they had been preparing in the 1930s stove.
