This weekend was one of the most relaxing and rejuvenating weekends I've had yet this year. It was definitely due in part to the CO trip (last for the semester!) that I went on: I went mushroom hunting on the Oregon coast! It's so cool that we have opportunities to do things like that here. We drove out on Saturday afternoon and went mushroom hunting in a coastal forest before it got dark. We found a lot of interesting mushrooms, and started learning which ones were edible.
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| This was what the forest looked like. We started calling it a "fairy forest" because it was so surreal looking. |
To get out of the forest, we hiked up a big hill. When we reached the top, we had this amazing view of the ocean. It was really windy, the sun was setting, and no one else was there. It was really surreal and amazing, and it was a couple of people's first time seeing the Oregon coast. It was probably the highlight of the trip for me.
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| The ocean! |
That night we made a meal with some of the mushrooms we found. We made three different toppings for pasta with the mushrooms, and a mushroom soup. It was a lot of mushrooms, but really delicious. One of the mushrooms we cooked was the size of my head, and I got to figure out how to chop it up.
The next morning about half of our group went out for a morning mushroom hike. We went to another part of the state park and looked around for a bit. We were mainly looking for
porcinis, which are kind of hard to find because they like to hide under logs. We found a couple, though!
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| Morning hikes are great! The light was beautiful. |
When we got back to camp we cleaned up, then all headed back towards Portland. On the way home we stopped in the coastal range and went looking for
chanterelles. It was really successful, and, like the rest of the trip, really pretty.
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| The woods we were looking in. |
It did start hailing on us a bit, but it was okay. We got back in the cars and headed back to Sequoia, the CO warehouse. When we got back we cleaned and returned all of our gear, then got to sorting the mushrooms. We had a ton!
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| The table was FULL of chanterelles! |
We each got to take some home. Tonight, some of us are reuniting to make a meal with the mushrooms we picked. I'm surprised I'm not sick of mushrooms yet!
The other reason my weekend was so peaceful is that MIDTERMS ARE OVER! At least, mostly. I have a Spanish test on Friday, but this week is not nearly as busy as my last month has been. That means that I had very little homework to do last weekend, which meant that I could fully enjoy the trip without worrying about what I had to do when I got back. I've been so swamped with work that I'm not sure what to do with all my time now, which mostly just means that I do my homework then watch Breaking Bad on Netflix (I know, I'm behind the game. But I'm up to season 3!).
Looking ahead, I'm feeling good. Registration starts Thursday, and I'm all set to register for my classes. I have pretty specific courses I have to take for my majors, so hopefully I get into those. The times don't contradict at all, and I'm far enough along in both majors that supposedly I have spots reserved for me in most of my classes. So, I'm pretty not stressed about that, which is great.
I hope that college applications continue to go smoothly! Please email me if you have any questions about LC, College Outdoors, mushrooms, how to manage midterms, or anything. My address is rekidder@lclark.edu. I will do my best to answer, and will respond to you as soon as I can!
-Rebecca
