Larison Creek Hike

Over the weekend we went to Larison Creek to hunt for mushrooms.  There weren't so many this time; either we were too late for them, or the weather had been too dry or too cold.  The creek bed is part of a large reservoir, and the slopes above the creek's banks are terraced by previous higher levels.










The most obvious mushrooms were the shelf mushrooms growing on the sides of trees.  Slightly less obvious, but ubiquitous once you started to look for them were some teeny-tiny ones growing out of moss-covered logs. 

At the parking lot there was a dead dear carcass.  Something about the empty eye sockets made it look oracular from its position between the worlds.  If we had been in a Grimm fairytale, we would have nailed the head to a gate and asked it questions--but it was old and gross and the rest of the family wouldn't entertain the thought of dead deer bits in the car.








The more coral-like ones remind me of Sheri S Tepper's novel, Raising the Stones. 

 These were growing about eight feet up on a tree.

Near our turn-around point, we came upon a kind of cascade of mushrooms.












This was my first mushroom hike with the new camera, and I'm still running into situations where the focal length and the zoom confuse the auto-focus of the images.  The flip-screen does make it easier to get at difficult angles without having to lie in mud or damp forest litter.