This is always one of the favorite field trips--because who doesn't love a good mushroom hunt?
As always, I have my field trip buddy with me. I really do have the best job.
And we had a great turn out with a lot of kids, and parents and grandparents, excited to see what we could find.
This year, along with the fungi, we found a couple of amphibians (pretty sure this is an Ensatina salamander),
several banana slugs,
which are always a hit.
The kids especially loved getting to see this one eating!
Found some cool lichens, too.
They're everywhere in these healthy forests.
And a few early wildflowers, but we still have a couple months before those are out in force.
Mostly, it was all about the mushrooms! And if you don't care about mushroom pictures, then you can skip the rest--I'm going to go ahead and throw all my pictures up because I was blown away by the variety we found on this hike (Purisima Creek from the Skyline Dr. side.) So here you go, mushrooms and other fungi:
