Late Summer Colors in the Woods

I did take a hike yesterday, but wanted to share about the quilt show then, so I saved these pictures for tonight.

First of all, green is a color. And I love it when the woods are green. I've been hiking a lot in the brown months over the last few years, so I want to be adamant about how much I love the green woods.

Not by planning, but it just happened that I got an array of primary-colored mushrooms.

Red is the Apple Bolete, or Frost's Bolete, Exsudoporus frostii. I looked back in the blog and I last saw a bunch of these in 2015. "Apple" should be easy enough to remember. They sure look like someone dropped an apple in the leaves.

If you uncover the stem, you can see that the underside of the cap is convex. It has pores not gills. That easily tells you it's a bolete. And the stem is striped/striated. It will get downright grooved as it ages.

Moving along to yellow, these are Honey Mushrooms, Armillaria mellea. They are supposedly very edible, but I have not tried them. I should... there's not much you can mistake for them.

Blue is iffy. Maybe it's purple. You'd think something that looks so distinctive would be easy to identify. Nope- there are lots of choices. Well, it may be Laccaria ochrepurpurea, Purple Laccaria. That word "ochre-purpurea" should tell you it can vary in color from a yellow-brown to purple.

I did remember to take a picture of the gills. Still not enough info, although it allowed me to eliminate a few possibilities.

For real blue, believe it or not there were a few late-blooming harebells, Campanula rotundifolia. Why "round-leaved" you ask, when the leaves are clearly narrow straps? The first true leaves that appear near the ground in spring are round. That was a nice colorful surprise.

I reported these miles yesterday.

I tried hard to stay on track with getting things done today. Did pretty well. I need to make a master list for September and then stick with it. Several deadlines coming right up. For some reason, I have a sore hip. Hope that shapes up soon!

See Frost's Bolete 2015

Squeakin' Past 4500 - Day 403

Today I continued along the Manistee River. It was really hilly as the trail has to dip down and up at every little creek. Sometimes the trail was high above the river.

And sometimes, the trail is down more on the river's level. There are so many conifers that this is a very pretty river in any season because there is so much green.

The big news is SPRING! Well, not really because it's going to get chilly again next week, but we are experiencing several really warm days this week. I've heard peepers and chorus frogs. Yesterday I saw mourning cloak butterflies and an orange one I couldn't ID from a distance. Bill and I had been hearing sandhill cranes almost since we started hiking, and we saw some fly over, but today two of them hiked with me!

In the fungal world, scarlet cup is a sure sign of spring.

This is probably from last fall, but the neat holes of the yellow-bellied sapsucker are always intriguing.

As close as I can figure with the newest map updates, I have a total of 314 miles yet to hike. However, I want to save up to 60 of these nearest home (my Spirit of the Woods Chapter section) till last. I might hike about 20 of those and only save 40. And I have the 106 miles in the western UP that I probably can't do until June. That leaves 148-168 that I can do on this particular outing. If I could average 10-mile days (I know that's fewer than I was doing, but my knees are pretty sore) that's all very do-able. Hopefully, the warm weather is rotting the snow north of here. Of course, there will have to be a few days off. I've hiked 11 days in a row now, and I'm starting to feel it, but I'm not stopping until the rains come this weekend.

This is all to lead up to... drum roll... 4500 MILES. This is pretty astounding, but I find it even more astounding that I'm still not done with this trail.

Miles today: 9.8. Total miles so far: 4500.5.

See Manistee River

Puttin' In Some Miles

  Cathy and I got out early this morning and put in 8.5 miles before noon! We went to 8th St on the North Country Trail (first road north of US 10) and hiked north and back.

The colors may not really get very good this year. Just hints of yellow in the woods, but pretty, nevertheless.

Nothing special, just a cinnamon fern, but it was contrasting nicely with the backdrop.

This view actually looks pretty nice. This is a beaver flooded area that is off the trail north of Centerline Rd.

We cheated and arranged some pretty leaves, but hey... they ARE pretty. Red maples, looking red (and yellow)

Best natural find of color was two Russula mushrooms not yet chewed up by slugs.

My NCT miles for me in 2021 is 405 (wow! pretty cool), NCT miles for Cathy for Hike 100 Challenge is at 69.5

North Country Trail, Lake County, MI, 8th St to Mac Rd and back. 8.5 miles

In other news: Om and I had French toast for supper- yummy on a chilly day! I actually managed to work 3 hours on the trailer this afternoon. Thought I might be too tired, but I did OK- that is good news in terms of being in shape. Worked some on hike food. Still nothing to cross off. Three of the "items" are so interlinked, that I'll mostly get to cross them all off together at the end. Really bad news is that I added another BIG itema and 2 small ones. I still have 35 BIG ITEMS (27 done) and 25 small ones (11 done) to do. Sigh. 39 days to go.

See Back in the Groove

NCTA Celebration- First Full Day

 
Today we went on a five mile hike on the North Country Trail. It was pretty hilly!



We started the day by having a little breakfast in the bare-bones trailer.



Some wildflowers starting to open. Should be more tomorrow. The Dutchman's breeches are looking good.



We found some big false morels (not sure exactly what species)



And quite a few lovely scarlet cup



The maple flowers were opening.



And the evening program was the Park Service Awards (for cumulative volunteer hours), followed by a presentation about Sleeping Bear Dunes.



We have to get up early, so I need to get to bed now!

Hike 100 Challenge is up to 19 miles.

	See Celebration Day 1
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Other Goodies on the Hike

 
Yesterday's hike also included some other interesting features.

One of the neatest things is that a large interpretive panel has been added to that section by the Forest Service. It seems that the ancient shore of a pre-Great Lakes lake used to be almost that far inland (about 20 miles). It's pretty difficult to take a picture that really shows the landform, but this was the best I could do.

The hill slopes off gently to the west. I took this picture looking east and you can almost see that there is a much steeper drop at the eastern edge of the hill.



Here's how that works. This is a portion of the interpretive panel. The wind moved the dunes eastward and then the sand dropped off the leading edge. They are now covered with forest vegetation. But beneath a very thin layer of soil, there is pure beach sand.



That sandy soil makes several kinds of blueberries really happy. The early ones are gone. Those were probably Vaccinium pennsylvanicum; the plants are under a foot tall. But the slightly taller ones that grow all in the same places were fruiting. Some people call these huckleberries, but an awful lot of blue-fruited things get called huckleberries. At any rate, I think these are Vaccinium vacillans (now V. pallidum). Whatever you want to call them, they taste good!



Here's a plant I usually show you when it has little red berries instead of little white flowers. These are wintergreen flowers.



What was red this week is the red russula mushrooms. Russula emetica, which is a descriptive name. Don't eat these unless you are a snail or a slug! But they sure are pretty hiding under the wintergreen leaves.



I also liked this fungus. Probably just an artist's conch. I didn't want to disturb things to turn it over. I think the bands on the edge are classy.



In other news: I didn't manage to do much today, sadly. I did write a chapter in DMS Mistletoe, so the day was not a complete waste. And I watched the original Pink Panther (1964) so you don't have to. Although I remembered it as being very funny, it's really slow by today's standards.

	See Dead Horse Marsh Walk
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North Country Color Wheel

 
Had a chance to take a quick 6-mile walk on the North Country Trail today. Everyone is posting pictures of mushrooms because it's been so wet those are this year's flowers. Me too! Here you go.

Red- I'm not going out of my way to ID any of these but these are red Russula sp. Past their prime, but still very red.



For orange you get these cuties.



Yellow fingers- an apt name.



Green- a stump turned into a terrarium with moss and mushrooms.



Blue- sorry, no blue fungus, but a blue blaze to mark "my" trail.



And a nice light purple polypore. (Not violet-toothed because it doesn't have teeth)



It was a great day for a walk in the woods- in the sixties, most of the bugs are gone.

I'm way behind on the NCT 100-Mile Challenge, but this gets me up to 48 miles.

	See Flower Show Color Wheel
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