Today's trail run turned into a chantrelle mushroom treasure hunt, so it ended up a little shorter than planned. That's all right though, I'm now planning on the Lake Padden Trail Half next weekend and probably didn't need a real big run. Mike and I met at Klahowya Secondary School at dawn, and ran into the Newberry Heritage Park trail network just west of the school. 30 minutes or so in there, the trails are very well maintained and marked, and there's nothing steep. Then we crossed the road into the new trail areas on the other side of the school, and at about 33 minutes noticed some mushrooms on the side of the trail (on the "Chantrelle Trail," of course). Finding chantrelles is like striking a vein of gold, so we stopped and followed it back into the forest, and picked three big bags. These things sell for $8/pound at the grocery store, so it's worth your time and a good idea to carry a plastic bag on October runs. Then we stashed our pickings and headed out on the Old Trail loop, which is advertised as four miles but probably is short of that. Then we went back to the cache, pick up our bags and walked out with some old man and his dog. Sun was up by that time, looked like a beautiful day was coming, so we went and found some coffee. 53:25 brooks cascadia
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