Fungus!

What a fun way to welcome June!  My girls and I joined 3 other fun-(and fungus) loving homeschool families for a hunt along the Yellowstone River today, at Loch Leven.  As we pulled up, the pouring rain did not bode well for happy kids, but as we finished our lunches, the sun came out and shined for the next 2 hours!  We looked like a bunch of humans doing impressions of hound dogs, heads down, wandering about, getting really excited over something our eyes or noses or intuition led us upon.  I found the first morel, a really small one, but you would have thought I had found GOLD!  Katy found the gigantic morels(I'll come back to them because they were an exciting mystery) and a large fairy ring of probably edible mushrooms (I have to do a tad more research before I take a bite of those).

Bella found horses (of course!), other kids were enchanted by red-tail hawks, the river, nests in trees.  It was a magical couple of hours watching kids and adults alike thrill at their discoveries.

Ok, back to the mystery morels.  Another mother and myself thought we had correctly identified them as false morels, which may or may not be safe and tasty, but picked them to bring back to the group to show off anyway, just because they were so big.  But others in the group thought they too were morels, really good ones.  Hmmm, what to do?  So someone suggested we stop by the Livingston Ranger Station and let them have a stab at it.  We did, and the awesome young lady rangers there correctly identified them as morels, after slicing one open to confirm it was hollow on the inside.  YAY!

Just a side note, I am so happy whenever I encounter female rangers (something I never remember seeing as a girl), and today, there were three and not a fella in sight.

Whatever you are searching for today, I hope you find it!