“I want to do a special post about mushrooms.”

”But you haven’t updated your blog. Write blogs about every place we’ve been up to now, and then you can do one about mushrooms.”

”Ugh. That takes too long. I want to show mushrooms.”

”Fine. Whatever.”

”Fine.”

ONTARIO HAS SO MANY MUSHROOMS!

What sorts of mushrooms, you ask?

OK, sorry, I couldn’t resist. Those of my generation will recognize a certain TV ad jingle for hot dogs. Those who don’t—well, you just don’t know what you missed.

But those aren’t all!

I’m particularly fond of the little white mushroom we found peeking out of a split tree trunk. And there were some very unusual looking (lichens?):

I don’t know if the second picture shows some sort of fruiting body, or a disease taking over; it was just above the first clump on the same tree. Didn’t see any others. I do remember seeing something like it near a waterfall in (I think) Glacier National Park; there was a sign pointing it out as rare, and indicating that it took decades or more and just the right conditions for something like this to grow. Reminded me of the alpine flowers we saw this summer in Rocky Mountain National Park. They live in such harsh environments that it can take one plant 70 years or more to bloom.

Which is why I get mad when I see people callously trampling, picking, or breaking mushrooms, plants, etc. You just don’t know how special something might be.

The area where we saw most of these mushrooms was interesting. The trail climbed up a series of ancient beach ridges from the days when Lake Superior had a much higher shoreline. Over the years as the lake receded, it left a series of near-parallel ascending ‘bumps’ in the landscape.

And speaking of shorelines, Superior has beautiful ones. Mostly, they are rocky, reminding me a lot of the Maine coastline. But in places, erosion has created spectacular white sand beaches.

Pancake Bay