Saturday fun at Pine Valley!

I had Friday and Monday off from school and hoped to get something fun in during that time.  Friday ended up being a day of many things to do around the house and Paul needing to work.  We decided Saturday would just be a fun day.  We started the morning off with a little hike to the waterfall in Pine Valley!  Oh what a lovely, cool morning it was and the ground was damp from recent rains and the river was full from them also.  Because of all the recent rain, there were mushrooms everywhere and so many varieties!  We had a great time seeing all of that variety and I took too many pictures of them!  We found one that would shoot out smoky looking stuff (probably spoors) when you poked it with a walking stick.  It looked like it was smoking!  I've never seen that one before!  I just read about them and they are Puffballs that have ripened when they turn brown and blast out their spoors!  It was a beautiful hike in lots of other ways always.  We found ripe raspberries along the way and feasted on them wherever we found them.  The waterfall was going strong and was beautiful as always.  We had brought along the kayaks and were hoping to go to Baker Lake or Newcastle Reservoir...and realized we had forgotten the life jackets.  We decided we'd go up the road and hike to Bridge Camp to see how it would be for camping.  Along the way we came the the seasonal pond that occurs when there's enough water.  It was there and pretty full but only about three or four foot deep in the deepest spot, so we decided we could do that without life jackets and it was fun!  After that, we did hike to Bridge Camp and some things were good, but lots of tree cutting by the forest service was disappointing and it's not as nice an area as it used to be.  We came home and took a nap and then got things ready and took Grandma up to Pine Valley for a nice, cool, peaceful picnic.  After that we went to Ferf's to celebrate Torin's birthday (see August birthday posts)!  It was a really nice, relaxing Saturday!

I looked up puffball mushrooms and found some funny and interesting information:

A Wolf..., What Now?

Sometimes, one can't help but  wonder about the folks who come up with the scientific names for life.  Case in point, about 50 puffball species hail from the Lycoperdon genus of life.  Translated from the Greek, "Lyco" means wolf, and "person" means "to break wind."  Yup.  It's the wolf fart mushroom.  The derivation of the 'breaking wind; part of the name is obvious, but why that offense is laid on a wolf is beyond the scope of mysteries this article can solve.  "Lyco" is somewhat unexpectedly found in the scientific names of many common plants, including tomatoes and club moss, so there may in fact be little logic to it.  

Puffballs have never been responsible for human death as far as can be determined.  Though on rare occasion, overzealous dogs inhaling copious amounts of spores they died.  Humans that have purposefully done the same almost suffered the same fate.  in a logic that only teenagers are capable of, eight Wisconsin teens in 1967 thought they could get a kind of magic mushroom high from snorting puffball spores.  Spoiler alert - they didn't.  What they did get was a month in the hospital when the billions of spores in their lungs found the moist conditions ideal to germinate.  A series of fungicidal treatments were able to save all their lives.  This is an actual named respiratory condition called Lycoperdonsis, which, yes, translates to wolf fart disease.  It may also have something to do with another name of the common puffball:  the devil's snuffbox.  Oh the stories they must tell their grandchildren:  "Kids these days!  When we were your age we were snorting from the devil's snuff-box and fighting wolf-fart disease!"