Salt Point Wild Mushroom Foray  

Join our guided foray to learn where and when to look for wild mushrooms at Salt Point State Park.   

Your foray leader Gregg Miller will meet everyone at the Woodside Campgrounds Day Use Area, and will guide the group to various locations within the park to find and identify wild mushrooms, as well as plants, trees, and other ecological features of the park.

What you will learn:

• Habitats and timeframes for finding wild mushrooms
• Indicator plants and tree species that accompany wild mushrooms
• Mushroom family groups, and some important look-alike's 
• Proper cooking instructions (Don't eat raw mushrooms!)
• Storage and dehydration tips
• Wild Mushroom collecting regulations and limits, and protected areas in the park
  
  

Starting Point:

We start at the Salt Point State Park Woodside Campground at 10:00am.  From there, the foray leader may want to drive to a different area of the park (in your own cars).  Be prepared for moderate hiking, cool weather, and possible rain.   Salt Point state park has a Day Use Fee of $8.00 per vehicle, which allows you to visit any park for the rest of the day.  

This guided hike will take approximately 3 hours, and you may want to bring a light lunch or snack for the trails.  Your foray leader has many years of mushroom hunting experience, and will teach you the basics and try to answer everyone's questions.  There are thousands of species of fungi in the park, so plenty to talk about.  There are many choice edible species, as well as look-alikes, and of course many that should be left alone.

There are many new phone apps and online resources for mushroom identification, as well as updated books and guides.  We'll cover those during the foray.  Mushroom Identification can take years to learn, and many mushrooms look similar.  You will learn about families of mushrooms, and most folks do best learning to positively identify one or two mushroom species per foray.  There's always something new to learn every time you take a walk in the woods!

We also highly recommend downloading a GPS app on your phone like GAIA or AllTrails to track your location in the forest, so you don't get lost or turned around. 

The iNaturalist app can help you record and identify mushrooms, plants, birds, insects, or any living thing you may find.