Mushroom hunting at W & M (back post)

 For my birthday this year, Kenan took us all to William and Mary to visit the boy. 

We had fun wandering around Historic Williamsburg.  Grabbed some coffees at Aromas coffee shop, then got some crazy delicious ice cream from Kilwins.  i highly recommend them! It was so good!

While wandering through historic Williamsburg, i spotted this Chicken of the woods growing on a tree in the front yard of one of the historic homes!  i seem to spot mushrooms everywhere i go!!

After leaving Historic Williamsburg, we went back to the W&M campus and decided to walk some trails and explore the woods.

We had so much fun spotting mushrooms! i would love to come back and do some actual mushroom hunting here. We didn't have to hike very far to find these beautiful Beefsteak mushrooms! These are edible and one of the few wild mushrooms that can be eaten raw.

These were popping up everywhere. i can't remember what they are called, but i had identified them and then let them be, so i am guessing they are not edible or i would have remembered what they were. They were really pretty though and neat to see them cover such a huge area.

i found hedgehog mushrooms, also known as Sweet tooth mushrooms. These are edible, although i have never tried them before. They can be identified by the 'teeth' on the underside. These grow from the ground and not on trees like Lionsmane, another toothed fungus i like to find.

i did manage to spot a couple tiny Lionmanes as well! They were really small, but it's still always very exciting to find one! i would love to come back to Williamsburg and do some serious mushroom hunting.  My boy has such a fun campus and amazing woods to explore here. He is not as excited about mushroom hunting as i am, but will still occasionally send me photos of mushrooms he's found while out walking the campus trails. 

This was a fun and simple birthday.  i loved getting away on a quick overnight, spending time with both of my kids again and getting to explore some woods!   Pretty much a perfect birthday and that ice cream at Kilwins is so good! 

My boy seems to be adjusting well to college despite all the weirdness of masks online classes and Covid restrictions.  Not really ideal for his first year of college, but he'll have some stories to tell one day about life during lockdown.