Hiking

[Catrin]

Decent hike today with a new hiking partner, I keep finding more women who like to head out into the woods. We decided to call it trekking instead of hiking. I was checking out my knee on a trail I've not done since long before my knee injury and it did fine. So well that when I bring my little hiking group back in 2 weeks I will make it a 6-mile route rather than the 4-miles from today. Was actually unsure how far it was until we were done so that was nice.

Saw LOTS of a wide variety of very brightly colored mushrooms of different sizes and shapes. Interestingly enough, they all appeared to be on the uphill side of the trail and never on both sides outside of one location that was on a hill top. Some were bright and fuzzy, like something from a Disney movie, others were bright and hairy, colors ranged from blue to red to yellow to white. I know that bright colored mushrooms are always to be avoided, but I've never seen so many! Will look them up to see if I can find out more about some of them.

edited: many of the mushrooms appear to have been a combination of amanita and fly agaric (another kind of amanita) - both posionious - and their colors were quite bright and vibrant. I may not be able to figure out what the bright red and orange fuzzy/plush ones were - they looked like they would be warm and fuzzy to the touch. We didn't touch them :-) Pity I didn't get any pictures. We saw many different things today that I've never noticed in that park before, interesting!