Nature's easter egg hunt

Otherwise known as Morel Hunting.  I have never been before.  But hunting for things in the woods where you don't know if they will be there or where they will be sounded like a party to me.  My neighbor had gone and brought back a few so that spawned a little excitement.  I jumped online and found a Minnesota Mushroom hunting forum.  YES!! They do exist.  So nerdy they are cool.  I want to join but haven't quite thought of the perfect screen alias for it.  One guy on the forum, "Foraging Fungi", said that season had begun and to look up to find the best Morels.  Look up you might say.....when mushrooms are in the soil?  Look up to find the branches of dead trees and then start looking on the ground near that spot.  After a few days of rain we were also ready for some serious physical activity so today was the day to go on our first morel hunt.

I had been seriously missing my old bike paths and parks from our former town.  We had an amazing location in town that connected us to all sort of bike paths and great parks.  I had been pretty down about not having the same ease at which we could get to great parks.  Until something amazing happened last week.  Isaac told me he was no longer in need of his training wheels.  He had just turned 4 and he is a big boy now and can two-wheel like one.  I seriously doubted this but decided to let him try and you know what - he was right.  He is two-wheeling like crazy now.  And because of this new endeavor of his we can bike faster and farther than we could before since Caleb doesn't get as bored in the bike trailer as he does in the stroller.  So now this opens up a whole new world of parks and trails to us.  One of these parks is where I decided we would have our very first morel hunt.  It is not a play set kind of park.  Just a really cool park that has a paved trail through the woods.  We love the park and have driven there to walk or bike but now we can BIKE there (since it is only about 1.5 miles away - 3 mile round trip - easy now that the training wheels are off)

So we woke up this morning, dropped Andie off at school and I told Isaac we were going hunting for morels.  He got really excited because I think he thought we would be hunting some big animal or something.  When I told him it was a mushroom and we would have to search the woods he became very quietly determined that he would bike to this park and find himself a mushroom.

20 minutes of searching, hiking, climbing trees and we found a meadow with trees on one end, many of which were down or dead.  And there we found our Easter Egg.....

Right next to a rotting log, poking up out of the dead leaves.  She is a beaut.  I was super excited!  I probably did feel like kids do on Easter morning when they are running around, looking for eggs and then find the treasure. 

By then the boys where ready to head to a park with a play set so we hopped on our bikes with our treasure and went and played, feeling pretty good about ourselves.  We later met Craig for a picnic at the woods next to his office and watched a man in camouflage lugging a bagful of them.  Isaac asked if he had just been hunting too and when I said "yes" he said maybe we would "catch" more if we wore camouflage next time.  NOW there's an idea.....

So I am hooked.  Ready to go hunting again soon!! I hope it tastes as good as everyone says but regardless of that the hunt sure was fun!