The elusive morel

So we went mushroom hunting on Saturday. Huan, Tyler H, Tyler's friend Cory, and I woke up quite early and we started driving west* in search of morels. Huan and Cory have both been morel hunting elsewhere and were excited at the prospects of finding tasty mushrooms that are $50+ per pound in grocery stores. Tyler and I were kind of excited about finding mushrooms, but also just happy to walk around in the woods on a nice day.

Huan did some research and we decided to look start our search in Cle Elum, WA, which is about 80 miles east of Seattle. What we didn't do a lot of research on is the climate of Cle Elum at this time of year. When we got there around 10:00 it was cold. As in just barely above freezing. We didn't even need our ground thermometer/meat thermometer to tell us that we wouldn't find any mushrooms there.

Anyways, we drove back through Snoqualmie Pass and found a forest service road that led us to some promising spots. The ground was damp, it wasn't cold... one would think perfect conditions for mushrooms. We spent about an hour looking around and found... nothing. While we were packing up an old Scandanavian dude stopped by and asked what we were doing. Huan explained that we were mushroom hunting (not those sorts of mushrooms), and he started laughing. A lot. He claims that while our instincts were good we wouldn't find morels in that area until July. Three months later. We were dismayed, but not cowed.

We continued west towards lower elevations. We stopped at a state park and looked around, again for naught. We decided to bag the mushroom hunt and take a hike, as we were close to some water falls. On our way back, less than 100 yards from the parking lot, we passed an Asian family carrying baskets. The two parents had a bunch of weird greens, but the daughter had something else. Something brown and wrinkly and beautiful.

She had morels.

When Cory pointed them out the mother clearly thought that her daughter was going to be attacked by a bunch of 30 year old dudes. Huan asked where she found them, and the mom said "Not here", which we translated as "Go to hell white devils, the mushrooms are ours!"

To seal the deal that we'd be frustrated about our trip Tyler H stepped in dog poo in the parking lot, and actually threw away his shoes rather than trying to clean it up. A disaster all around.

Here are pictures.

* When I saw "west" I really mean "east". To me the mountains are "west", but in fact, in Seattle, water is "west" and mountains are "east".