This past weekend was a lot of fun for me. I rode my quad every day, met up with Cherise at the Valley Motor City cars and coffee event, ate some pizza, and made it over to a friend's place for a llittle get-together with a fire Saturday night. I also did some work around the house cleaning my room, dealing with laundry, doing an oil change on our lawnmower (a total mess), and chainsawing part of a massive tree which fell on our path through the woods during the crazy storms last week. I really wanted to take my boat out to fish, but our Silverado that pulls it is down with a busted transmission line, so I'll return to that idea once it is fixed later this week. No biggie. 

All of this is pretty standard stuff for me to partake in on my days off, but there was something else rather unusual I was invited to do that I am glad to have done. My brother asked me if I wanted to go mushroom foraging, and I wasn't completely sold at first, but decided to entertain the idea anyways. We hopped on my old four-wheeler and hit the woods, and it only took about two minutes for us to discover the motherload. There was a full hillside of this edible mushroom that looks like cheese, so we noted the location to come back to for harvesting and continued looking. 

It quickly became apparent that there are so many different types of fugus native to this area, and I did my best to document every species we encountered via photographs. There were tiny mushrooms the size of my pinky all the way up to some absolute burgers the size of my head or bigger. There were all different shapes, growth stages, colors, and patterns on these mushrooms too, making it difficult to know for certain which were or were not of the same species. My favorite ones that we encountered looked just like the mushrooms from Mario, with the red tops spotted in white dots. 

I really enjoyed being outside in the woods walking around looking for stuff. It almost felt like a side-quest in an RPG video game! Had it not been for the ravenous mosquitos, I could have done it all day. At this point, I don't think there's more than 10 square inches anywhere on my body without a bug bite on it, but I still can't complain; I'm just thankful I haven't had any bad run-ins with poison ivy. 

After harvesting the edible fungus we found, we ended up with a couple pounds. My mother took on the task of washing them up and preparing them for freezing, as there were way too many to try to keep fresh otherwise. Personally, I enjoy eating mushrooms, but they must be on something like a steak or pizza. I have not worked up the courage to try these ones we found yet, but I will.  It was ultimately just fun for me to hang out with my brother, learn a little bit about nature, and explore the woods looking for mushrooms; I would certainly do it again!