The Mushroom and Tick Hike

Over the weekend we took advantage of the BEAUTIFUL weather in the northeast and went geocaching in a local preserve. We found five caches in all, and saw probably 20+ varieties of mushrooms - I had no idea so many types and colors of mushrooms even grew around here! Isn't that a particularly picturesque pair of mushrooms?

Ok, this is so immature, but here's a mushroom that looks like a butt!


There was a very cool fire tower that we could climb:


And the view was spectacular! That's the Hudson River in the distance, and the Catskills beyond that:


And we saw a newt while we were looking at some weird mushrooms, it's always a bonus when we see a newt, I love them:

It was a lovely afternoon. We finished up by having ice cream at a place renowned for their homemade ice cream to celebrate that DD finally passed her swim lesson level (this was the third try). Then we went home and took showers and did tick checks.

Are you ready for this?

We pulled off each other a combined total of 27 ticks!

They were the tiny "nymph" ones. Like the size of a pencil point. You can hardly even see them. They were mostly on our feet and ankles. Definitely a new "tick record" for us!

The end.