The Upper Peninsula

Michigan's Upper Peninsula is a spit of land that divides two of the biggest lakes in the world, Superior to the north and Michigan to the south.  There was a lot of logging up there when all the forests were being cut down to build up the prairie and Great Plains.  In fact, there is an old log slide down an enormous dune in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore where I visited.  Apparently the dune is even bigger and steeper now than when they used it to load ships with lumber. Meanwhile, the trees have grown back, mostly.

I don't know what the Yoopers do these days, but the coastline of Lake Superior is spectacular, with white sand beaches, cliffs and rock formations,

enormous dunes,

shoals and sunsets,

streams full of minerals,

forests, and of course, mushrooms.

We had roasted weenies with homemade sauerkraut and fire-roasted peppers and zucchini for dinner.

Pasties are a specialty food up there.  They are a Cornish pie filled with potato, rutabaga, onion and meat.  Apparently they were the preferred lunch food of Cornish tin miners.  The pies supposedly retained heat well enough that the miners held them against their bodies to ward off drafts and were strong enough to survive a fall down a mine shaft.  They were also extremely convenient for miners who needed to eat with filthy, even toxic hands.  The miner would hold one side of the folded crust.  Once he had finished the rest of the pie he discarded the soiled end as an offering to the knockers, resident spirits upon whose goodwill survival in the dangerous mines depended.

Also they were tasty. Yum.

The pickings were actually pretty slim for mushrooms, unfortunately, at least the weekend we were there.  Amanita muscaria, commonly known as Fly Agaric, was growing in some abundance among the numerous birches, however.  I wasn't sure at first whether this is what the large yellow mushrooms below were, since I thought Fly Agarics were red, but a quick consultation informed me that they also come in this orange-yellow tone.  Fly Agarics are pretty interesting mushrooms with a very long history stretching back to the misty prehistory of the Central Asian steppe.  Some even claim that it represents the Soma described in the Rigveda, one of the central texts of the Hindu tradition.

One thing that no one advocating for or against the consumption of this mushroom mentioned that it is a high-quality edible - large, firm, sweet and mushroomy.  Not as good as the birch bolete at the bottom of the cutting board, which was really delicious, but still quite good in an omelet.  And still interesting a few hours later.