Travel

Good Morning Everyone,

Today we’re finishing up HinTN’s long-lost, then re-sent submissions from an amazing trip to Utah. So far, it’s been wonder after wonder, and I know you’ll just love today’s offering!

But…this brief resurrection of On The Road is now over, and so OTR will return when the new site launches.  When it does, please use the new form that will be available on the new site to make submissions. As soon as I have one, I’ll begin the new On The Road.  One issue with the new form and site is that the old OTR content will not be edited to look like the new OTR stuff, so layout, etc. will be very different. It looks good and works well, clean and simple – I can’t wait for the first submission and post!

That plus my moving is why I’m fine with having a hiatus – there will be a clean break between old and new content and layout, etc. and I don’t have a lot of time for the next couple of weeks. I’m still mid-craziness, though things are getting better by the day.

Continuing the series from HinTN.

The only one from Dead Horse Point State Park.

Dead Horse Point – Colorado River View from Ryans Bench

Dead Horse Point State Park is a small slice of the hugeness that is Islands in the Sky, but it is especially beautiful in its overlooking of the Colorado River. This photograph is from the location of a bench placed in honor of a young man who loved these lands, worked at the park, and died much too young.

And then there’s Arches NP. Wow, just WOW!

The first of five from Arches National Park.

Arches – North and South Arch

This is more or less what I thought Arches was going to be about, but I was delighted to discover how much more there is to this small park.

Arches – Sand Dune Arch

Sand Dune Arch was located in an enclosed space reached by passing through a narrow defile. Sand collected in the space, creating a beach you could sink your bare feet into satisfyingly cool sand and kids could play underneath and on top of the arch itself.

Arches – Broken Arch Across the Desert

Emerging from the beach at Sand Dune, the trek across the desert to Broken Arch beckoned with this vista.

 

Arches – Arches in the Making Part 2

One of the most interesting aspects of being in Arches, indeed in all these parks, was the immediacy of the vastness of geologic time. Both water and wind work ever so slowly and inexorably on the seemingly immutable land. These “arches in the making” were exemplars of this work.

Arches – Landscape Arch and its Replacement

It was a brisk one hour round trip out to Landscape Arch, which in geologic time is probably not much longer for this world. Luckily, it has a replacement close to hand. If you look closely you can see how it’s growing wider.

Also too, Moab was a delightful town.

Wow, just wow. Utah has amazing geology and I’m so thankful you could share some of it with us. In the late ‘oughts, I did a couple of solo roadtrips from Colorado into Utah. Out West, I just love to drive and see, just see everything. So I went to Arches and did a couple of brief, hour hikes and took some (not so good!) photos and saw enough of Canyonlands to know I wanted to go and really explore and spend some time. Since then, I’ve learned of lots of interesting remains in Canyonlands, things left over from explorers, outlaws, hermits, Native tribes, etc. You could spend a lifetime exploring its entirety just on the geology, flora, and fauna, but with archaeology added, it really should be on folks’ “don’t-miss” list.

Have a great day, Halloween, and related holidays. I hope the Great Pumpkin is kind to you and yours.

It’s comforting that my mother died on All Soul’s Day/Dia de los Muertos. I’ve been a light collector/fan of Day of the Dead artwork, sculptures, and figurines for over 20 years now, but this year everything is packed; pre-Christmas, decorating isn’t a priority right now!

On that note, OTR shall return with the new site, take care, all!

On The Road: Finishing UpPost + Comments

Good morning, everybody and Happy Friday!

Today we continue with some fantastic submissions from HinTN that I’d lost but have been re-sent. We’ll continue Monday, and that may be it until the new site. I very much wanted to run these as the last ones before my hiatus so I’m so glad HinTN reached out and re-sent them to me – I felt horrible being unable to retrieve them, and am thankful for gracious people.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

These are from Canyonlands NP.

Canyonlands – Green River Overlook

Canyonlands NP and Dead Horse Point SP share the same space near Moab, UT Dead Horse Point is tiny; Canyonlands NP is huge. It has three contiguous but very distinct areas, all of which overlook from various elevations the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers. We only got to visit Island in the Sky, which shares space with Dead Horse Point State Park. The view south over the Green River is amazing because the drop from the overlook to that tableland is about 1,000 feet. Then wherever the water ran the land is just carved away into the drainage for the Green River.

Canyonlands – View through Mesa Arch

This photo looks east through the Mesa Arch, over the Colorado River to the Lasale Mountains.

Canyonlands – Jeep Trip Hammer Formation

We took a jeep trip at Canyonlands, too, and along the way we saw more of Thor’s Hammers.

On The Road: Another DayPost + Comments

Good morning, everybody!

This is a brief return of OTR. These are pictures I’d hoped to run a few weeks back, so I’m glad to finally be able to run them. I will continue tomorrow and Monday, and we’ll see how  things stand then.

The move is going well, but slowly. It’s a complicated situation but the end is in sight and normal life should re-commence in a couple of weeks.

Without further ado, enjoy the pictures and the day!

These are a continuation from HinTN, long-overdue thanks to yours truly losing them and then access to my old email. The delay is 100% my lame-ass fault.

These are from Capitol Reef  National Park.

Capitol Reef – Approach from Boulder Mountain

As you drive from Bryce to Capitol Reef NP you cross Boulder Mountain, which affords a first look at the area around Capitol Reef.  It is primarily a long geologic feature called the Waterpocket Fold, a huge sandstone formation that runs north and south to the west of the Henry Mountains.

Capitol Reef – Arch in the Making

The park is so big that we took a four hour jeep ride just to try and get a sense of the land.  Of course we saw a nascent arch.  They are everywhere in this area when you start looking.

Capitol Reef – Petroglyphs

The park includes a very hospitable river bottom with lush grasses and fruit

I just love seeing petroglyphs, it’s an amazing way to touch mankind from ages past. Looking at them you can almost see a bare arm scratching on the walls during a smoky, boring night or rainy day.

Have a great day, everyone. We’ll return to Utah tomorrow!

On The Road: A Brief Return!Post + Comments

Folks,

Today is the last regular post for a few weeks as I have to focus on packing and moving and unpacking and a bunch of related things. Our offer was accepted and things are moving fast!

I had hoped the new site would be live and the new submission function would be functional and so we’d have a bunch of content lined up, but that’s not the case and I don’t have the time to deal with email submissions right now, so please accept my apologies.  I’ll try to post something here and there, but I don’t expect I’ll be back to a regular schedule until next month, unless the new site comes on before then.

Today’s picture is the view, a 5-10 minute walk from my soon-to-be front door. I’m so very excited to be so close to the river as I spent age 7-30 minus college near this same river but miles downstream. I spent countless hours along and in it, exploring, learning, fishing, partying, and in general, playing with Nature. I’m glad I’ll have such access again – being able to walk to the river from home is such a nice thing, it becomes a companion, a refuge from home and the stressors of life that you can almost stumble to, instead of having to drive somewhere and deal with all that hassle.

Looks like I can eat 1-3 fish per month (depending on species) from this part of the river, which is so much better than where I used to live downstream – fish are verboten for those who care and it always breaks my heart to see so many immigrant laborers fishing to feed their families in the late afternoons and evenings. I get it, and I love to eat fish, so I fish to eat, not just for sport, but it saddens me seeing them feed their families a significant part of their weekly protein from not-so-good waters. The fish that far downstream have heavy metals and nasty chemicals in them, but fresh, “free” protein is undeniable as is the joy of some good time outside catching dinner.

Have a great rest of the week, everybody!

On The Road: On HiatusPost + Comments

Folks,

Sorry for the no-post Friday, my laptop was restoring until the wee hours of the morning and I was sound asleep.

On that note, have a great day and let’s hope this week is full of good stuff, though perhaps less crazy. Or not, maybe this is the fever we need to burn through.

For mushrooms this year, I’ve got one last set of pics and explanations.

First, to answer some questions from earlier posts, like all fungi, the king bolete(boletus edulis) fruit when the conditions are good. That set of conditions varies depending on the type of mushroom. It is often about water. This is for two reasons – wet ground is welcoming to mushroom spores and the moisture from the rain is used to make the mushrooms which are a fruiting of the fungus organism to spread spores. In the mountains of Central/Southern Colorado, temperature is also a factor as rains earlier in the summer do not produce the boletes, and the later in the year, the less likely a rain is to generate growth. These proto mushrooms usually begin underground along the mycelium strands in the dirt. With sufficient moisture and time, they will pop-up from the ground, displacing earth and otherwise forcing themselves up and out of the dark. If there was substantial rain, or if more comes, then the mushroom will keep growing. I’ve seem some (rotten!) that were close to 2 feet tall and I’ve seen pics of even larger specimens from Oregon where moisture is prevalent; the mountains I explore in Colorado are in the arid zone for the most part, only a few spots being “alpine”. The mycelium routes water from a large area to their fruit, so finding pools or areas where water flows when it rains will often be good clues to finding mushrooms.

Mushrooms are huge protein providers, so many forest animals enjoy them, even species that are toxic or distressful to humans. It’s neat to see an elk or deer snacking on a large mushroom, or to see a squirrel or chipmunk run away with one in its mouth. They are tasty and very good for you, but as I recommend, although you can eat some raw, most mushrooms have some proteins and enzymes that can cause gastrointestinal distress. These potential irritants are denatured by cooking. Never eat something unless you are 100% sure you’ve identified it correctly; this takes experience. The wrong mushroom, raw or cooked, can permanently destroy one or more organs or cause a painful, horrible death of organ failure and lingering misery.

Preserving mushrooms is a whole book, I’m sure.  I usually slice them and dry them in my dehydrator or a very low-oven (very risky if you aren’t a hawk!). You can also slice them and mix them with oil and freeze with reasonably good results.  You can also can them – either in water or in tomato sauce (as a jump start on pasta sauce as the boletes contribute a lot of flavor and umami). I keep dried mushrooms in glass jars and they survive fine for years if kept cool, dark, and dry.

I was asked about spore printing to identify mushrooms. What you do is cut two mushrooms of the same type and put each cut on a piece of black or white paper. After a couple of hours, it will release spores from the underside of the cap onto the paper. This print is unique to the species and so is a great tool for identification, even if it takes some time. You do white and black paper because identical-looking mushrooms (LBMs, for example – little brown mushrooms) can shoot out white or black spores or something in between, so it’s best to just spore print both paper colors unless you’re sure. I’ve not seen colored spores, but I believe that there are some neat specimens out there.

I wish I knew more; I hope to be able to spend some serious time learning more about the different species. I’ve got a few books but so much of the detail washes over me like a small wave. I have seen some amazing slime molds and non-mushroom fungus but cannot find the pictures. I expect I’ll find them some day and that will be a new post!

OK, onto the pictures. These were mostly taken in the rain.

Pushing up through the soil/litter. These are not boletes, sullus or something like that. The color is similar, and when you find mature specimens, they often confuse from the top. The dead giveaway is that the underside of the cap has gills whereas the king bolete has tubes.

click below to see the entire post

On The Road: Mushroom CleanupPost + Comments

A few more shots. I’ll share some more answers and narrative for tomorrow’s post and then we’ll be done with mushrooms for a good, long while!

This hail from the night before! Crazy

What a neat fungus! I’m unable to locate my slime mold and fungus pics from a two day exploration and I’m sad – there are some neat, rare, amazing lifeforms we rarely encounter.

Have a great day, everyone.

On The RoadPost + Comments

Good morning, everybody,

A solid Thanks to TaMara for the past two days, I’m still off-kilter, but I expect my laptop repair Thursday so the end is in sight!

Another day, more pics from previous mushroom hunts.

Enjoy, I’ll try to answer questions previous and new.

Chipmunk damage, but also an older bolete – note the yellow gunk. I think of it like crab/lobster goo – you CAN eat it, and I’m sure someone considers it a delicacy, but it’s trash as far as I’m concerned. I scrape the red caps clean of that yellow crap.

An awesome cluster-find. When folks ask “why king boletes?”, I smile and explain: “it’s like a gold rush – you make a find, collect it, and then as you’re getting up, you see another cluster even better than you just found and then as you scurry over to claim and harvest it, you see three more.”

This is exemplary, close to 5 pounds fresh. I failed to be as precise as I am now as you can see by the cloggy-dirt at the base of the bigger pair.

An Amanita Muscaria, quite gorgeous.

This was from my yard in June 2010. We had this amazing tarantula living on our property. Each September you’d see them marching back to their burrows to overwinter.  Amazing lifeforms.

So we had a “volunteer” from a house a block or so away take up in the front yard next to the road in an empty spot where a fruit tree had failed. I let this plant grow and it was an amazing thing. Once it flowered I could identify it – Jimsonweed, or as I knew it, datura.

I never used it, but the flower was amazing. It would open at dusk and expire the next morning. The opening was a wonder of nature – the stalk would shake and tremor and the petals would unfurl a bit, then a pause (as, I imagined, more liquid was pumped into chambers and tubes). You could HEAR it. An amazing thing and I’ll try to dig up some video with audio to share.

Have a great day, everybody.

On The Road: The MushroomingPost + Comments

Folks,

Here are some pics from years past. Because of tech issues, I’m not on my main machine and can’t get to all my photos to easily search for what I’d hoped for, so this is a bit more of a whimper than bang.

I’ll see if I can sort that out for next week for one final mushroom post showing some of the really neat lifeforms living in our forests. I have seen some crazy weird fungi and slime molds, let me tell you, and I’d like to share.

note – these are from a 2013 expedition in Colorado, likely 11,000 feet

This is a LARGE mushroom!

Also impressive, but nothing like #1.

Zoom into to find the Amanita Muscarias and one bolete.

My haul – close to 35 pounds across two bags. I was less choosy then so I took many more marginal mushrooms and ended up throwing most or all of them away, so that haul isn’t quite as impressive as it could be. But still, yes, lots and lots and lots of mushrooms to cook and preserve. I’ll discuss drying mushrooms next week, but that’s how I handle them. I use my dehydrator and whatever else I can to to dry them out before they spoil. Once dried, they last indefinitely. I mean I’ve got some dried morels from probably 20 years ago that I still throw into soups and such and I know I’ve got 10 year old dried boletes in a jar or two. When there’s a boom, I dry lots and when it’s a normal year, I just eat and share. In a bad year, I eat.

I sliced up that 1.5 pound beauty, sauteing 1/3 in butter, olive oil, garlic, and onion, and used the rest of the slices to stuff a nice rainbow trout I’d caught on the way home. Fresh-caught trout with some freshly-harvested mushrooms is an amazing meal, though I also include some bacon, onion, and homemade whole-wheat breadcrumbs in the stuffing. It’s been 6 years and I still remember that meal!

Have a great day and weekend, everybody. Fall is here and that is good.

On The Road: Pictures Of Mushrooms PastPost + Comments

Good morning, everyone!

Today I’m going to share more mushroom pictures from my most recent Colorado adventure.  This is as much an informational post as scenic because I’m going to teach you how to properly collect a king bolete mushroom.

But first, an important warning: never eat any mushroom if you have the slightest doubt that you’ve properly identified it. While all mushrooms are safe to touch/non-topically poisonous, many of them are distressful-to-deadly when eaten. An important adage: there are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but no old, bold mushroom hunters.  Always learn from those who know so that you have the confidence in what you harvest and eat. Properly identifying mushrooms is fun and a good way to ensure you won’t be rushed to the hospital, so get a good guide or app to supplement your mentor. Finally, to be safest, make a spore print for the most accurate identification.

Another thing to keep in mind is that most mushrooms need to be cooked. Even non-poisonous ones can have some proteins and enzymes that can cause gastrointestinal distress. Technically you can eat many varieties raw, but I prefer to cook them, often in butter with some garlic and shallot/onion.

Before we get to the instructions, I wanted to share a few of the other fungi I found while searching for the king boletes.  Tomorrow I shall conclude this mushroom extravaganza with some older pictures showing a greater variety.

Just some mushrooms growing along a branch. I didn’t bother trying to identify them.

Again, another neat specimen that I didn’t identify. Love the scales/shaggyness!

Ah yes, the Amanita Muscaria, the “Alice In Wonderland” mushroom. Bright red with marks. Slightly poisonous, allegedly semi-hallucinogenic. I figure if you want to hallucinate on mushrooms, go find some cow patties and eat something well-known for its “medicinal” use. The nice thing about these from a king bolete hunter’s perspective is that, if you see one or more of these, you should expect to find some boletes nearby too. I don’t think they compete, but I’ve almost always found one or more boletes within 20 feet of an amanita muscaria.

click below to see the entire post

On The Road: Responsible Mushroom HarvestingPost + Comments

Good morning everyone,

Thanks TaMara for filling in Monday and Tuesday. What with my crazy life right now and missing my laptop while Dell fixes it again, I really appreciate it. Hopefully she’ll return with more pictures soon.

In early August, I bolted to Colorado to hunt mushrooms and have a few days to myself before life got very complicated (house hunting, buying, moving, getting a house fixed up and rented, etc.).

I had limited success. The whole drive there, I had dreams of coming back with 30 (dare I dream – 50!) pounds of good boletus edulis to cook, share, and dry. My haul was more like 4 pounds which was shared and eaten. This was due to my being about 10 days later than ideal and to the recent dry conditions on the mountain I was searching, so I had to break out my old-school “wildcatting” tactics which paid off.

It was a great day adventure, and I’m glad I went, even for just that experience. It had been 5 years since I’d wandered the mountains at 11,000 feet looking for delights, and I know that I will do what I can to be able to go next year, hopefully better-timed with the rains and peak opportunity. Life is short, and it’s just so much fun and a great way to plug into nature while hopefully having a “gold rush”. I was only gasping for air occasionally, and I know if it had been a good year, I would have had to take many rest breaks because of all the running around.

High altitude treasure hunt hint – bring a disposable oxygen can which is cheap satisfaction and relief from that burn of too-little oxygen. Also, do extra aerobic exercise for a few weeks before going to high altitude to optimize heart-lung state. And lose weight.

The boletus edulis, known as the King Bolete, Cepe, Steinpilz, or Porcini, is a large, delicious mushroom that grows in many forest areas in the US and Europe. To my experience and knowledge, they are found in the Rockies as far south as New Mexico, and up into Canada. I know that they are not as rare in moister areas and a friend has some land in Alaska that has them in abundance. They grow in cooperation with pine trees. They are tasty, large, and very fun to find.

On the day I went, I ran into a few people – a Polish lady looking for her husband (a common occurrence as you often separate to cover more territory when things aren’t lush) who spoke no English but was impressed with my haul and a nice couple from near Alamosa looking for mountain raspberries which were about two weeks out, they said. I explained what I was doing and delivered a brief intro to boletes and gave them a nice medium-sized specimen to take home and cook. They extolled the shaggy mane mushroom they collected near home, but I assured them that this was even better.

Ok, enough text, let’s go with some pictures. These are all from this year’s trip. I’ll share some more tomorrow and then older photos Friday.

The first find of the day and it was the biggest. One issue with large mushrooms is that they are targets for flies to lay eggs. So once you get bigger than this, they are much more out of the ground and bigger targets.

Let’s just say that I’m not Donald Trump and I’m not Dr J, so this is a large freaking mushroom. I didn’t weigh it individually, but when I first cut it, I expect it weighed 1.5 pounds. I kept them cool on the drive back East days later, but they did lose some moisture.

Another, older bolete.  Notice the chipmunk nibbles.  Chipmunks and squirrels are quite fond of them. I’ve been screamed out countless times by chippies for stealing their treasure, and I once saw a squirrel bound away with a small but perfect mushroom in its mouth, like a cartoon.

This mushroom was almost rotten and fell apart when I touched it. Not good eating!

This was the final haul of the day. That was some very, very good eating. Fresh boletes, sliced thick like a steak, sauteed in some butter with garlic and onion, salt and pepper, it’s close to perfection. Note the color of the top right mushroom – that is the ideal color.  Once it’s seared into your soul, it’s hard to mistake other mushrooms for this one; I can see that color peeking out from leaves or other tree litter from farther away than you’d believe!

Have a great day everyone, we’ll re-convene on the morrow.

On The Road, Now With Mushrooms!Post + Comments

These are the rest of the wildflower (etc.) I took on my last afternoon in Colorado in early August. It seems like a lifetime ago!

Have a great day and weekend, everybody. TaMara will be posting Monday and Tuesday, and we’ll see what I can brew up for Wednesday.

On The RoadPost + Comments

A few weeks back, I took a brief road trip to Colorado – Fremont and surrounding counties (Custer, Chafee, Park, Summit, El Paso, Pueblo). On my last afternoon, I went to two different places I used to love so much. The drive from one to the other was amazing, and I hope to finally splice together my video so I can share it.

Today I’m submitting some of the wildflower pictures I took in the late afternoon at my final stop. They aren’t much compared to many of our great submitters, but I hope I captured a bit of the beauty that was all around me.

It wasn’t truly the golden hour, but the light was just amazing for some shots. These are un-enhanced; I expect I’ll do some work on some of them once my main pc is returned from service and I can take advantage of my 4k monitor/good graphics card/better setup.

I am not a botanist, nor do I know squat about wildflowers, flowering weeds, etc., so there are no descriptions. Any expertise is welcome, and will be again tomorrow, when we enjoy part 2.

Have a great day, everybody, we’ll re-convene tomorrow.

On The RoadPost + Comments