Empire Mine- Penn Gate Trail

This time around my husband and I took a hike very close to home, Penn Gate is located on East Empire Street and is a very popular shared trail for hikers, bikers, runners and horse back riders. There hasn't been a time we've been there alone, but everyone is very pleasant and there's usually some friendly canines to meet as well.

Things are a little dry and dusty up at the staging area but about a half a mile in or so you climb a hill then descend back down into cool, shaded forests.

The trails here are especially pretty in the fall, plenty of bright yellow foliage to contrast with dark tree limbs and green pines. And today was an especially nice day, after some surprisingly chilly ones.

The Man and I were here for a specific reason, mushroom hunting. We'd found a place off the beaten path earlier this year that had yielded some awesome variety, and with the rains last week we were eager to see what had bloomed since.

While the place had hoped to find riddled with fungus proved less then fruitful, the forest itself was literately covered with tiny mushrooms. I can't claim to know much about the names of the different types I'm showing here, but I'll do my best with Google to find out what they're called.

Bird Nest Fungus

Spiny Puffball

It's been about a week since it rained, but the mornings have been frosty and wet, and the forest was still surprisingly damp. We went towards the back of the park and explored what were probably game trails, getting scratched up by blackberries. But everywhere we looked were mushrooms, on the path, off the path, in the trees, under trees.

These little guys are from the mycena family (we believe) and were obviously enacting some hostile take over of the entire forest. There were areas where it was tricky to walk because there were so many underfoot. We trekked through the woods, exploring the creek bed and taking game trails here and there to see what we could see.

The weather was absolutely perfect, I think mid-fall and spring are the best times to visit Empire Mine, we found a couple seasonal stream beds that are probably gorgeous when there's actually water around. Not mush else to say about this hike, we were out and back in about two hours and saw multiple types of mushroom and fungus, too many to show here without turning this into nothing but a image post, but here are a few more I just had to share, because there are awesome.

We've got a full week ahead with family obligations and the like, though I'm hoping to squeeze in a trip to Gateway Park in Penn Valley and one more hike before Thanksgiving. The Man and I have a tradition of going on hikes after any major holiday spent with family, and Turkey Day may very well see us down at Bridgeport looking for Bald Eagles. Otherwise the next hike will most likely be Independence Trail or Upper Humbug, before the snows move in.