Mushroom hunting and getting lost

Got out to the woods today. Not the usual woods where I'm familiar, but a new place where we went with Sam's Cub Scouts once. It's a little ways from the house, and I wanted Sam to come with so I'd have some pics of him for @goldenoakfarm, but he was a turd and didn't wanna come. Punk.

In hindsight, I can't blame him.

I set out to hike the two mile green trail. When we went with the scouts, Sam found an old reishi mushroom, and I wanted to go look for more since we had some good rain recently.

I didn't like the green trail. Well, not all of it. First I hiked the dark blue trail. Then I was lost. At the end of the blue trail, (when I was lost) I figured screw it, I'm not far from the truck, it's all trails in the same park, let's try the pink trail.

Well, the pink trail was cool. Lots of rocks and hills and trees. There were mushrooms all along, but all remnants from past seasons. It's still too warm I think. The pink trail led to the orange trail and I wondered if I should have grabbed a map. I should have grabbed a map.

I didn't at any point want to go backwards, so I just kept on keeping on. At some point I let Melissa know I was lost. Big mistake cause she somehow imagined that to mean I was filming an episode of Naked and Afraid in the Panamanian rain forest. I ended up touching every trail on the map.

The orange trail turned to the light blue trail, turned into the red trail, turned back into the light blue trail. During none of this adventure did any of the landscape look the same. But I wasn't really paying attention to that much. I missed the forest for the dead mushrooms at the bottoms of all the trees. Next time, I'll just go out to run. That way I'll pay better attention to the surroundings.

After the light blue, I found the white trail. The white trail is marked "easy," so I got excited. Those "advanced" trails were really hard on the old feet. My ankles are pretty sore. They haven't moved like that in a really long time. The easy trails, I reasoned, were closer to the trail head. Nope. The little stretch of white trail there took me to the windy bit on the yellow trail, which finally turned to the green trail. Which I didn't recognize at all. So from there, I followed the gravel road whichever way was uphill and got back to the truck after four hours of trekking.

Anyone know what that is? It's a polypore on an elm tree in Texas. I'm praying some type of ganoderma and would love insight.

More of the same. I dont think it's artist's conk, but I don't know. Can't seem to find much about their remnants, but they're polypore conks that do like elm trees...

Last season's turkeytails. There were a lot of logs like this.

Annnnd a bit of usnea on a mesquite tree with a deer skull in it. Pretty legit.

So, no harvest today. It's too hot out still. But all the remnant is encouraging. I wonder if these guys fruit on the same tree repeatedly. I'll be going back, though I won't be lost next time, cause I've been on the whole damn thing now! More reading to do :)

Good Sunday. Only like 3/4 lost cause, yeah, all the trails are connected like I thought. I just didn't know where I was or how long I would be there. Word to the wise: take a map. Or at least look at the map that's posted at the trail head.