It's 7:00 a.m. right now, and I just returned home from my second mushroom hunting expedition of the year (and ever for that matter). I left Moses Lake, WA (east of the mountains) around 7:30 p.m. on Friday night and headed directly to the Quinalt Rain Forest (it's in the Olympic National Park near Amanda Park/Quinalt) and found a little clearing by the road to pitch a tent.
Next morning I woke up around 6:30 freezing my ass off and headed to a meadow near the North shore ranger station to look for liberty caps. Although the conditions in the field seemed absolutely perfect for libs, I managed to find only one active shroom (a liberty cap). Unhappy with my luck I left the meadow and spent several hours driving around the rain forest looking through meadows and clearings to no avail. Around 4:00 I left the rain forest and drove to Aberdeen to get gas, after which I drove east and north to Port Angeles. I'm hoping to move to the Port Angeles area soon, so my wife, daughter and I looked around the town for a while, taking in the sights, and also looking for any signs of cyanescens in the many gardens in the downtown area. Foiled once again, we headed towards Forks and ended up setting up tent in a very mushroom infested area a few miles up an unnamed forest service road.
Early Sunday morning I woke up and spent a couple hours exploring the area around where we had camped. It was a very moist area and contained dozens of different types of mushrooms (including some I had never seen before), but nothing that I was looking for. I was getting depressed at this point (not really, I enjoy finding all kinds of mushrooms, not just psycho-active ones) so we took off and headed back through Port Angeles and Sequim until we got to the Old Fort Townsend State Park. Once again I found many diverse types of mushrooms, but none active. I did come across an amazingly large cluster of green mushrooms growing across three fallen trees and picked one out of curiosity. I've yet to identify it however. After eating lunch at the park we continued to Port Townsend, searched for cyanescens and liberty caps, and then began the drive home around 3:00 (not really driving "home", but driving in the general direction of home, intending to stop at every interesting field along the way). South of Port Townsend we drove through a little town called Chimacum, and there just happened to be a mushroom show in progress, so I stopped in. As I was looking at all the specimens they had layed out on tables a woman in her forties walked up to me and asked me if I wanted any information, and whether I was interested in edible mushrooms or psychedelic mushrooms. We sat down and she ended up feeding my head with information for about 10 minutes, including directions to what she claimed had been a great spot for finding liberty caps when she was still hunting them (apparently she quit using them recently). The catch? The "great spot" was back in Port Angeles in the opposite direction of home.
Desperate for a little bit of success I decided to head back to P.A. to see if I could finally find more than one little lib. For those who know the city, the area she told me to look was the long strip of grass growing along Hollywood Beach, next to the asphalt walkway. By the time I got there it had become fairly dark, and as I continued my search it became very dark. I ended up modifying my crack lighter and using the flame to examine the ground (there were also lights spaced regularly along the path). When I had nearly given up hope, I chanced across a rather large patch of LBM's that in my excitement (and in the dark) I believed to be liberty caps, so I got down on my knees and picked as many as I could find that were larger than pins. After this "find" I was satisfied and we left for home. It wasn't until I got home around 3:30 a.m. (my wife had to take a 2 hour nap while driving and my license is suspended, so...) that I was able to examine the mushrooms closely and determine that they are not liberty caps, and in fact not active whatsoever.
And so, unfulfilled, I - Master of Insomniacs - sit here in front of the Shroomery forums trying to appease my appetite by imagining all of your pretty mushrooms were in my basket.
Random notes:
1) Due to additional hunting experience and a first-hand look at many types of mushrooms with identifications at the Chimacum mushroom show, I am now able to identify many more types of edible and poisonous mushrooms.
2) This was my first encounter with other mushroom lovers... now if only I had someone to hunt with. A pregnant wife with no interest in psycho-active substances is no fun.
3) This trip was to have been my first experience hunting with another (more knowledgeable) person - dobie to be precise - but alas, turning my cell phone on and off about 500 times over the weekend did not seem to help the fact that dobie doesn't have long distance.
4) A solitary liberty cap seems to have little to no effect, lol.
5) My entire hunting trip was based on a $50 budget.
And that is my story. Congratulations to those few (if any) who made it all the way through without losing interest.
-Matthew
--------------------
Like a fiend in a cloud
With howling woe,
After night I do croud
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts have increas'd;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.
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