For those unfamiliar with this NAMA event, it is held at a different location every year, always selected for a time and place where mushrooms are, or at least should be, coming up. This year, contrary to several past years, the selected location had extensive mushrooms, that is if you were over 10,000’ in elevation. The seasonal monsoon conditions favored several southwestern states this year, including Colorado, at least over 10,000’. Every afternoon we were treated to those showy cumulonimbus clouds rolling in accompanied by thunder and lightning. Our last night there we even had a prolonged shower at the camp. It was good to see rain again! This annual foray is a great experience to visit other parts of North America to meet like-minded people and see the mushrooms of that area. Many forays are always held, a full team of sorters and identification experts is on-hand to put names on things and each year, examples of all the mushrooms found are described and vouchered. This year the foray was attended by over 250 people, many that were friends that I’ve made over several past forays. It was great to reacquaint with old friends and make some new ones. Just like our local forays, attendees to the NAMA forays are friendly, easy to talk to and pleasant to be around. For me, the draw for these forays is always the mushrooms. I thoroughly enjoy seeing the wide variety of different mushrooms in different parts of the world. As such, I went out on every opportunity there was to sign up. There were daily all day and four to six half day trips each day so there was ample opportunity to visit different habitats. It is always pleasing and somewhat surprising how many things I recognize. I typically recognize most things I see at least to genus. Even things that appear to be a species I recognize, I am unwilling to try to put a species name on them. I’ve been wrong too many times. Many familiar genera were found: Amanita, Russula, Lactarius, Hebaloma, Suillus, Hygrophorus, Albatrellus, Leccinum, many Cortinarius, etc. A total of just over 150 species were identified and vouchered. While the tables holding the finds from each foray were sagging under the numbers found, many were repeats. The most collected species for the trip was the familiar Amanita muscaria (variety flavivolvata). I had heard reports that a species I was looking forward to finding was abundant this year: the famed red-capped porcini of the Rockies, Boletus rubriceps. And yes it was. They were big,

Please do not request a permit unless you plan on going there.  Remember that in the winter it can be a difficult drive to get to the forest, and you will need to walk 1/2 mile before entering the legal gathering area. Here is the   SDF map   and so me forest rules .   If you would like to request a permit please, visit the Soquel Demo Forest Website and look for the Mushroom Gathering Permit under "Recreation" and follow the instructions on permit request form.  You should recieve your permit by email within a few minutes. Please note that extensive parts of the forest will be closed to access due to recent and ongoing logging activity  Please respect all closures areas so that we can contiue using the forest. Mushroom picking is not permitted in any area administratively closed by the Forest Manager whether or not mushroom gathering is specified on closure signs. From October 16, 2024 through May 1, 2025, Corral Trail and Corral Road remain closed, as well as the entire area of the Sulphur Timber Harvesting Plan (except for passage along Hihn's Mill Road and Sulphur Springs Road). See map below for locations. The Sulphur THP area is closed to entry since hazards exist such as loose hanging branches, rough terrain and loose logs. Please stay on roads while passing through the Sulphur THP area and follow any signage you may encounter along roads and trails. You may not wander into the timber area to gather mushrooms- stay on the road! Failure to obey signage may jeopardize the mushroom gathering program at the forest. Look for Area Closed signs, timber operations, crews working, rehabilitation areas, research sites, etc. and obey the closures.   For more info on the closures, visit the SDF website . Before going to the forest it is always best to check for updated information at https://www.facebook.com/CALFIRESoquel/ . Remember that this forest is in a remote location with very limited cell phone reception. Please follow all of the rules on the permit and posted at the forest. Remember in particular that the parking area and the first 1/2 mile of the road are private property and no picking is permitted. For additional information, see the Calfire website at  Soquel Demonstration State Forest .

I discovered this Laetiporus growing on one of my eucalyptus stumps. To record its growth, I took the same picture every day for 11 days, and sent them out to club members, so we could all watch its growth together.

Local Forays-Sold out    We will offer a series of guided local forays on the weekends of January 7,8 and 14,15. These forays will be led by local mycologists and will have the goal of identifying and learning about our local fungi in their natural habitat. After each foray, our culinary committee volunteers will prepare a tailgate style tasting of incredible mushroom dishes while we discuss the days finds. We will try to keep the group sizes small in order to allow a more personal interaction with our leaders and for covid safety. These will be outdoor events, so be prepared for wet and cold weather and some walking to see our mushroom habitat. The price to attend the walks will be $10 for adults, $5 for full time students and free for children under 12. We are suggesting that participants  make a $5 donation if they will be sharing in the treats prepared by our culinary artists. Xerocomellus atropurpureus Mushroom Lecture Series During the week between the forays, Monday-Friday, January 9-13, we will be offering a series of discussions/talks on Zoom featuring talented mycologists covering a range of topics. This is an opportunity to hear about the exiting work of some great amateur and professional mycologists.The talks will also be live streamed to our Youtube channel for anyone unable to attend the Zoom. Tropical Mushroom Collage. Photo by Lauren Re iNaturalist Project During the forays citizen scientists will be encouraged to document what they see on iNaturalist. Observations will automatically be added to the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair – 2023 Mycoblitz Project on iNaturalist. In addition, th e general public are encouraged to record their own fungal observations in the Santa Cruz Mountains and surrounding area from January 1-15, 2023 for inclusion in the Mycoblitz. Visit the project page for more information. We hope that this modified format will provide an interesting, educational, fun, and safe event for the whole family, and that next year we can bring back the traditional fair, bigger and better than ever. 2023 Fungus Fair iNaturalist Mycoblitz

The Fungus Federation is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We have all the trappings, including a set of bylaws   and a Board of Directors, known as Ministers in Fungusfedspeak. Elections are held every two years at the last meeting of the season. This year's elections will be held at the Membership meeting on May 15th at the Harvey West Scout House. Below you'll find a list of the Board Members up for election. Please note that only the Prime Minister and Vice Prime Minister positions require having served previously as a board member. The other positions can be held by any FFSC member. This is a super opportunity to get involved in the operation of the Fungus Federation, direct and shape the club's activities, and get to know a great group of people.  Again, THIS IS AN ELECTION! You can step up for any office, even if there is already a name listed. Several positions have provisional candidates who are open to either stepping aside for an enthusiastic new person.  To get a sense of what is entailed in these positions, check out the  Ministerial Duties in the bylaws , see if anything looks interesting, and chat up the relevant ministers. They'll be happy to talk about what they do so you can see if a particular job might be a good fit. Let Prime Minister Vellany Pierce know if you'd like to participate! Elected Positions: Prime Minister : Vellany Pierce Vice Prime Ministe r:   Open  - Richard Rammer will run but would welcome an actual race (or perhaps step aside for another candidate) Minister of Propaganda:  Open  -  Kitty Elvin will continue but welcomes new volunteers contribute to this position. Minister of the Exchequer (Finance) :  Margaret Carpenter Minister of Membership:   Open Minister of Programs:  Richard Lyness has volunteered to return to this position, but is open to stepping aside for a fresh contributor. Minister of Long Distance Forays:   Open  -  Kitty Elvin will continue if necessary but would love to pass this essential and rewarding position on. Minister of Local Forays : Dan Tischler. Dan would like to form a Local Foray Committee to increase variety and frequence of local forays.   Scribe:   Andrea Wilson can continue or pass to an aspiring scribe. Super intro position, no knowledge of mushrooms necessary. Stores : Andrea Wilson Science Advisors:  Henry Young, Christian Schwarz, Phil Carpenter    Appointed Positions:  These positions are not part of the elections process but please let Vellany Pierce or a board member know if you have an interest in one of these! Sustenance : Bob Wynn Culinary : Bob Wynn continues in Culinary and would welcome a co-conspirator for planning and setup duties Video/Media : Justin Pierce, welcomes members of potential media committee   Website :  Open Education : Jeanne Gonda Fair : Les Seltzer NAMA Representative:  Phil Carpenter Minister at Large :  Open .   The updated elected ministers are found at this page: FFSC Ministers

Susan Labiste also contributed to this field report. On a 2016 Foray in the Sierras My daughter and I headed up 50 toward Pollack Pines to check out the King Fire and to see what the area now looks like. We scout up around 4000' to 4500' on Peavine Ridge. We found some patches of snow but most areas were free of snow and warm. We found patches of corts popping up and cup fungus. The manzanitas were just starting to bloom quite lovely. Looking toward Tahoe we saw plenty of snow. We then headed down to Sly Park to cross over to Pipi. We found the road to be closed 23 miles past the reservoir so we took a short hike at Sly Park. We found 1 almost eaten large coral with just the stem remaining, 1 very old elfin saddle and 3 large old blewits on the trail. We hike near the creek so we found few mushroom along the trail. Here is a link to my (Kitty's) photos from this trip (on Facebook) . No morels on either area. However we did hear reports of a few morels at lower elevations of 2000' - 3500'. Looks like as long as the weather continues to warm up and rains continue we should see some activity in the next 2-3 weeks. But what do I know - still a crazed beginner here. Sue headed for 88 and checked Pipi. Here is what she reported, "There didn't seem like much to report regarding mushrooms other than the photos. Snow is off the ground in the camp. It is still showing up in small patches on the North facing slope as you approach the camp. Beyond Pipi the snow blocks North South Road well before reaching Pioneer Emigrant Road, and that was before this last storm. At Pipi the bracken fern is not yet sending up fiddle heads. The dogwood remains bare and is not yet blooming. There were no Ramaria (corals) and no snowflowers yet. The ground is soaked and still cold. The mountains are just beginning to wake up."

Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer, two students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, grow all-natural substitutes for plastic from chitin molecules found in polypores. McIntyre and Bayer were taking a class from Professor Burt Swersey called Inventor’s Studio. When McIntyre and Bayer took the class in the fall term of their senior year, neither came up with anything very workable at first. Gavin’s idea for a car-exhaust attachment that would burn off emissions with charged plasma was ingenious but probably unsafe. “Like driving around with a lightning bolt in your tailpipe.” Eben’s idea for a no-moving parts turbine that could generate electricity in high winds by means of sound did not impress Swersey at all. Toward the end of their first semester, Eben thought of a previous R.P.I. class, in which he had been given the problem of making insulation panels out of a mineral called perlite. The difficulty with perlite is that it’s loose, like handfuls of popped popcorn, and tends to settle. Eben, who is the product of a one room schoolhouse in rural Vermont, grew up helping his Dad, a maple sugar farmer, on a one hundred forty acre sugarbush farm. Ranks of maple trees rise on the rocky hillsides above the farm. In the spring they would tap thousands of the best trees and connect them to a vat in the sugarhouse by PVC tubes along the steep ground. Father and son built a complicated wood chip burner to process the syrup in the sugar shack, without burning the roof down. One of Eben’s chores was to move the wood chips to the burner from on open bunker made of telephone poles and chicken wire. Though covered with a tarp, the pile of chips sometimes got wet and sprouted mushrooms. Eben noticed how the fine white fabric of their mycelium sometimes grew through the pile so tenaciously that big bunches of chips stuck together in a single clump. Eben ordered a grow-it-yourself mushroom kit while he was home during a break. He took the mushroom spores the kit contained, combined them with water and nutrients in a glass jar, added some perlite, and put the jar in the basement. When he checked a few days later, the jar held a solid white disk of perlite knit together by mycelium strands. With not much else to show for the semester of Inventor’s Studio, Eben brought the perlite disk to class. “He takes this thing out of his pocket,” Swersey recalled, “and it’s white, this amazing piece of insulation that had been grown, without hydrocarbons, with almost no energy used. The stuff could be made with almost any waste materials — rice husks, cotton wastes, stuff farmers throw away, stuff they have no market for — and it wouldn’t take away from anybody’s food supply, and it could be made anywhere from local materials, so you could cut down on transportation costs. And it would be completely biodegradable! What more could you want?” Gavin and Eben worked together for the next year trying all kinds of substrates and  heating methods. Twice, they almost burned the lab at school down. They tried lint from clothes dryers, Jell-o, lobster shells, even hair. (“If it worked we were going to call the product Hairsulate.”) Instead of hunting for venture capital, Eben and Gavin financed their company by winning grants and competitions. They were still proceeding in the Edisonian hit or miss style, when Sue Van Hook, a senior teaching associate in biology and natural sciences at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, read an article in the local Albany Times Union. When studying for her degree in botany at Humboldt State University in California, she took a course in mycology and was smitten. She wrote her graduate thesis on macrofungi and has been studying mushrooms in the field and under microscopes ever since. After eighteen years of teaching at Skidmore, she saw something that changed her life. She called Eben and talked with him for two hours. She asked Gavin if he knew anything about mushrooms. Neither knew much. She asked, “Can we get married?” (In the fungal sense, I presume). Van Hook went on wide-ranging mushroom hunts collecting new species for the company’s archives. At Skidmore’s bio labs, she and her students spent hours cataloguing the finds and recording their characteristics. The most useful mycelium came from a group of polypores. The mycelium of polypores has very strong hyphae. These hyphae can knit a molded piece of substrate solidly together. A single cubic inch of substrate can contain as much as eight miles of mycelium. Bayer and McIntyre’s invention creates natural substances that imitate plastics. The packaging material made by their factory takes a substrate of agricultural waste, steam pasturizes it, adds trace nutrients and a small amount of water, injects the mixture with pellets of mycelium, puts it in a mold shaped like a piece of packing that protects a product during shipping, and sets the mold on a rack in the dark. Four days later the mycelium has grown throughout the substrate into the shape of the mold, producing a material almost indistinguishable from Styrofoam in form, function, and cost. An application of heat kills the mycelium and stops the growth. When broken up and thrown into a compost pile, the packing material biodegrades in about a month. Van Hook retired from Skidmore to work full time with Eben and Gavin at their company, which they call Evocative . She gives lectures to prospective clients and investors where she projects on screen the molecular structures of chlorophyll, starch, glucose, cellulose, lignin, and chitin. “These are the molecules that nature builds with. For us to have a sustainable planet, we must design and build with these.”   The air nearby Evocative often smells of cream of mushroom soup. In a corner of the building a sealed-off space called the Dirty Room receives the agricultural wastes and other substrate materials when they come in. Big white nylon bags filled with chopped up cornstalks, husks, crushed remains of cotton plants, barley hulls, peanut hulls, buckwheat hulls, milo hulls, hemp pith, rice husks, wheat straw and ground up old blue denim. At a conference, Gavin holds up a block about the size of half a stick of butter, lighter than balsa, but as hard as pine, a piece of solid mycelium pure chitin that had been grown from nutrients and without any substrate. He said it had possible applications for aeronautics.  He added that chitin is also an excellent insulator, and explained how he and his colleagues are growing electric circuits on fungal tissue made of the mycelium of household mold. In the presence of toxic materials, certain molds get around the toxicity by sequestering the metals onto their cell walls. Therefore you can put tissue taken from the mold into a copper solution and impregnate the tissue with varying amounts of copper by changing the concentration. In other words, you can make a fungal resistor that can be part of the circuitry in a computer or a cell phone. Then, instead of sending old computers and phones to be taken apart hazardously in the Third World, you can recycle them with the chitin providing nutrients for new tissue and the metals going back into a solution to be reused. In a press release dated September 24, 2013, Evocative Designs announced upcoming production of Myco Foam surfboard core material. Editor's Note:  As of 2025, Evocative has gone on to release numerous mushroom-based meat alternatives, textiles, packaging materials, and construction materials. They're exploring applications in medicine and biotech, as well as computing. The original New Yorker article is now available online. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/20/form-and-fungus

Now that you have read  Henry’s account of being lost in the wood , I’ll tell you my side of the story as the companion and the various thoughts that prompted my actions.  Caldor Fire Recovery. Photo by Katherine Elvin Henry and I had driven up Friday night, slept on the ground and had risen early for a full day of hunting.   The plan was to first look for morel at the burn north of our campground and then look for boletes on the way home that evening.  We spent the majority of the day walking up and down the steep hillside between the two roads that bordered the burn we were hunting.   We had been having mixed success in finding morels, but overall we were doing very well.  At lunch, we had noted how quickly the predicted stormy weather was coming in.  We also talked about the need to leave the area before it started raining since the road we were on was in such poor condition. We had gone out on another leg of the search, splitting up, as is usual for us.  A little later we met again halfway down the ridge (again, as is usual for us) and discussed our “plans”.  I was going to go down to the road below the burn and Henry was going to work his way further east at the same elevation.   After working down the slope and finding little worth keeping me there, I worked my way back up, slowly moving eastward as well.   By this time the wind had picked up and it was getting noticeably cooler.  I was still picking lots of nice fresh morels but I heard some distant thunder and decided that it was time to get back to the truck and get out of there.  I worked slowly back up the steep ridge, picking as I went. Something seemed wrong about the direction I was going.  I felt like I was going too far east and needed to move more to the west.   Even with that, I found that I was at least half a mile east of the truck.  When I got back, Henry was not there.  That really did not concern me since it is not unusual for Henry to be the last one in.  I dropped off my haul of morels and went back out on a short loop to kill some time waiting for Henry. By now, the thunder was getting more intense, frequent and close.   When I returned, Henry still was not back.  Now I was concerned!  With the weather deteriorating rapidly, I knew something was wrong from our earlier discussions about departing before the rains.  I dropped off my basket and went to the area where we had met in the woods and searched the entire region east of there, both up and down that ridge.   We have long-established calls, whistles, etc. that we use to “communicate” and I was using them but with no answers.  I made my way back to the truck, hoping of course that Henry would be there.   No such luck.   That was the crucial decision point:  do I assume that he is just really slow in getting back or do I assume the worst?  Given the previous discussions, I made the fairly simple decision that something was wrong. At that point, it was about 4:00 and I knew that I needed more people to cover the area where he might possibly be.  I never for a second thought that he was lost; I was convinced that he was hurt and unable to answer my signals.  Henry and I had hunted together for many years and never in all those years had he ever been lost, and that was in parts of the world where it was much more likely to get lost.   Remember that the area we were hunting was a slope between two roads:  impossible to get lost, right?!  Go uphill, hit a road, go downhill, hit a road – no problem; therefore no compass, no survival gear, no water and no extra clothes in case of bad weather.   All that went through my mind in a flash and formed the basis of my decision to walk out and get help. I had to walk since Henry had driven and he had the keys.  ( Lesson #1: Take a spare set of keys and give it to your hunting partner )  I knew that he needed to be found before dark and for that I needed help.  Just as I wrote a note (just in case he DID come back late), the heavens opened with a vengeance.   The next five hours were really frustrating since it took a long time for the search and rescue team to mobilize and get there from Placerville. All this time it was pouring rain and I was envisioning Henry in a heap somewhere in a T-shirt, freezing.  Once the authorities were involved, I was not allowed to go back out to hunt (this was REALLY frustrating).  I did take a couple of El Dorado County Sheriff deputies out in a search right at nightfall, only to have them announce that they would take up the search the next morning since they didn’t search the woods after dark.   Their “plan” (standard issue, I guess) was to drive the roads with lights and sirens – a fine plan if someone is lost, warm and can get around to find the road again.  Of course, I was jumping up and down trying to get through to those guys that all of that was worthless since he would already have come out if he could since he NEVER gets lost.  I really believed that unless we continued to search through the night, by morning he would not have survived.   My frustration level was really going off-scale and I started second-guessing my decision to get help in the first place.  I felt like I had just wasted all the daylight left in the day and had nothing to show for it.  If only I had continued to search by myself, I would have at least felt like I was doing something positive.   All of that ended abruptly when I heard that radio call from the search vehicle that had gone off in the wrong direction but was successful in finding him. “Lost?  What do you mean, he’s lost?  You mean he isn’t hurt?”  I had all these mixed emotions going at once:  relief as well as disbelief that he really was actually lost and that they had actually found him.   The fact that he was found strictly by accident only adds to the incredulity of it all.  I must say that I really was impressed to see that Henry had come out with his basket – full of morels.   But, you know, we never did have time to go look for boletes.

FFSC foragers What a great time! It was a beautiful day to explore the woods, and though we've had a dry spell and hence lack of fleshy fungi, we found a surprising range of mushrooms. Species List Waxy Caps Black Trumpets Helvellas Mycenas Giant Gyms Lion's Mane Deer Mushrooms a lone Candy Cap Amanitas Artist Conks Sulfur Tufts Turkey Tails Lichens Russulas and more. Thank you to everyone who attended! Happy Hunting, - Cass Fuentes Minister of Local Forays

None-the-less, there was some really cool finds, including Hericium coralloides (a choice edible related to Lion's Mane), an Auriscalpium vulgare , some candy caps, and a collection of several robust and showy waxy caps.] Auriscalpium vulgare (Soquel, 2016). Photo by Cass Fuente s Just over 25 foragers attended, and for many it was there first time hunting for mushrooms. Thank you to everyone who joined; you were enthusiastic, had great questions, and found some awesome stuff. And thanks to Justin Pierce for helping with leading/identification! Go to this link on Facebook to see more pictures. Below is an (incomplete) list of the species we found: Auriscalpium vulgare Callistosporium luteo-olivaceum Clitocybe nebularis Helvella dryophila (Oak Elfin Saddle) Hericium coralloides (related to Lion’s Mane) Hygrocybe conica (Witch's Hat) Hygrocybe flavescens (Yellow Waxy Cap) Hygrocybe punicea (Scarlet Waxy Cap) Hygrophorus eburneus (Cowboy’s Hankerchief) Hypholoma fasiculare (Sulfur Tuft) Lactarius rubidus (Candy Cap) Mycena haematopus (Bleeding Mycena) Mycena sp. Panellus stipticus Psathyrella longipes Ramaria sp. Ramariopsis sp. Russula cremoricolor Russula sp. Stereum hirsutum (False Turkey Tail) Trametes versicolor (Turkey Tail) Tremella aurantia (Witch’s Butter, oak and Stereum associated) Tremella foliacea (Brown Witch’s Butter) Happy hunting, - Cass Fuentes FFSC Minister of Local Forays, 2016

Sadly, the weather has been so warm and dry this year that despite spreading out and searching a wide area, no one found any edible Boletus . Lisa finds a Ganoderma tsugae (North American Hemlock Reishi) at Echo Summit (2015) Our hunt included the tried and true locations near the still flowing creeks, but no luck. Happily, we had a great time anyway. Those of us looking for Ganoderma tsugae (North American Hemlock Reishi) found as many very fresh, moist ones as we wanted. Many of them within walking distance of the lodge. One intrepid group even found edible Sarcodon imbricatus which we cooked so everyone could taste it's nutty flavor. Everyone had a great time. Many of us had fun on Saturday afternoon after the morning forays doing other things such as hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail (part of the Pacific Crest Trail) on the high side of Lower Echo Lake and exploring the Taylor Creek Visitor Center . Taylor Creek is where the land-locked Kokanee Salmon that live in Lake Tahoe swim upstream every fall to spawn. The visitor Center has a spectacular Stream Profile Center underground and right in the creek with aquarium-like windows for viewing of the fish in the creek. We didn't see any spawning salmon because it's a little early still but did view trout, minnows, and crawfish. The afternoon was followed by a gourmet dinner prepared by Chef Bob Wynn. Many members generously donated their dried mushrooms from past forays which Bob used to create two brilliant black trumpet and morel flat bread pizzas and a wonderful mixed mushroom ragout of gypsy, hedgehog, and yellowfoot. Other delicious dishes included bacon-wrapped, stuffed chicken breast; polenta; broccoli; collards; and green salad. This was followed by a wonderful fruit dessert. Some members brought and shared homemade beer, hard cider, and mead and you'd never know by the volume of laughter echoing throughout the lodge that evening that no one found an edible Boletus that day. As always, the Echo Summit Lodge provided breathtaking views of crystal clear vistas of the Lake Tahoe Basin; the visibility couldn't have been any better. The water of the surrounding lakes was a beautiful, clear blue. Once again, we wish Lee Yamada a very special 'thank you" for making this epic venue available to us every year through his membership and work with the California Alpine Club. Species List (Courtesy of Dennis Nolan and John Munoz) Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) Boletus sp.? Boletus calopus (bitter bolete) Boletus fibrillosus Fomitopsis pinicola Hypholoma fasciculare (picture says something different) Leucopaxillus gentiana Naematdoma Faciculare (Sulpher Tuft) Neolentinus ponderosus (Sawtooth, Trainwrecker) Gomphus kaufmannii (false chantrerelle, scaly chantrelle) - correction per Debbie V. Ganoderma tsugae (Reishi) Ramaria stricta Russula sp.? Russula albonigra Russula brevipes Sarcodon imbricatus Suillus pungens (Slippery Jack) Suillus tomentosus Suillus umbonatus Tricholoma flavovirens (Man on Horseback) Editors note:  The original article included a link to photos posted on Google+. Unfortunately, Google+ is no longer available for personal use as of 2019.

Alaskan varied mosses. Photo by Katherine Elvin The landscape which is Alaska is alone worth the trip. Snow capped mountains, the fjords, Denali, glaciers, almost virginal forests, deep mosses of varied hues (Not Hugh's), and turquoise rivers. Then you add the animals: bears, moose, elk, belugas, killer whales, puffins, bald eagles, musk ox, Dahl sheep, salmon and much much more. If that is not enough, you add the sports: fishing, kayaking, dog sledding, flying, scuba diving, hiking and you get the picture; lots to see and do. Oh did I mention "mushrooms"? They have mushrooms up there along with berries and other very interesting plants. This year however, the rains failed us. On the Kenai pennisula, where Bill has the lodge, they are experiencing a drought where the rivers all throughout the pennisula are 2 feet lower than usual. Bill pushed the foray week 1 week because last year, the rains came later. Luckily for me last year, I like to linger and for the last couple of days I was in rain and bolete heaven. This year however even, that did not work. We did get a little more the last day before we left. We however did find mushrooms on our hikes some led by Bill and others we did on our own. Gypsies, Birch boletes, man on horse back, hedge hogs, shaggy manes, hawkwings, alaskan gold and birch polypores. We should have Sue Labiste do a current write up on that polypore soon based on what she learned from this mushroom. Here is Sue's feature on the Tinder Fungus . We hiked Exit glacier, had dinner at Salmon Bake just outside of Seward attended by a waitress who was tripping on something but made for an entertaining evening, an amazing potluck where Jerome cooked up 2 racks of lamb which was finger licking good, caught a mess of halibut fishing out of Homer, and managed to wrangle some salmon out of the Kenai river in spite of the "banana jinx" on a rainy afternoon. Alaskan botox The stories... this trip had a mess of them. Talk to anyone who went this year and Alaskan botoxask if pepper spray works. We each had a personal encounter. Did you hear, I got the Alaskan botox? I fought the local flying bugs, won the berries and lost my vision for a day or two. Nothing a little steroids couldn't fix. None of us who went fishing will bring bananas on a boat. By the way — I hear the cure for bananas is iron. I need to find me a small iron good luck charm for the next trip. No matter what happens, this foray never disappoints. Thanks Bill, Jerry and everyone who attended. You made the trip for me again. Now to settle down, enjoy grilled halibut and toast topped by a generous dollup of lingon berry (low bush cranberry) jam while perusing this year's Alaskan photos, and reliving the fun all over again. Yep, it was worth it and yes, I most definitely will do it again, given the chance. Editor's note: More photos from this trip were previously available on Google+. However, Google+ was deprecated for personal use in 2019.