Last weekend, we went for a hike down in the valley with a few of Chris' brothers. The proclaimed reason was to search for morel mushrooms, but I was more interested in just walking around and seeing what was new. We go down every spring, and sometimes enough mushrooms are found to fill grocery bags, but I'm never the one to find them.
Personally, I'm more interested in seeing how the usually-dry creek bed has transformed with the season's snow melt, and looking for unusual rocks exposed there. Unfortunately, plenty of dirt has been washed into the creek bed over the past couple of years, so now the rocks are mostly buried and grown over with weeds.
For Jonathan's part, he was content picking flowers (er, "flowers" ... as they were mostly dandelions) and jumping off fallen trees.
Tom was the first to find some good-sized morels (below). Chris found some more later. We followed the dry creek bed almost to the property line and decided to head back -- although we'd lost track of Chris by that point. He had been encouraged by his initial find, and was on a mission to find more mushrooms.
Jerry had taken a different path on the way down, and found a calf that must have just been born that morning. Apparently, a cow will often hide her newborn in the bushes and take off for a bit. I'm sure the cow wouldn't be happy to see us around her calf when she returned, but she wasn't anywhere in sight, so we let Jonathan take a look. He said he wanted to give the baby cow a hug. I didn't let him get quite that affectionate, but the calf wasn't moving around much, so I let him pet it a little.
It's a long, steep walk back up the bluff side, but Jonathan was lucky enough to have three uncles to alternate between for rides on their shoulders. Chris showed up not long after we reached the top. We didn't hit the jackpot like we have in years past (not yet, anyway), but there was enough to sauté and enjoy with dinner.
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