Kenny and I left sunny Oak Ridge to do some hiking at Frozen Head State Park, 25 miles north of here this afternoon. We noticed a band of clouds over the Cumberland Mountains as we were driving there but we didn't think much about them. We hadn't been in the parking lot more than 5 minute
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s when we heard thunder, the wind picked up and soon it began to rain... hard. We sat in the car and waited awhile to see if it would pas
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s... it didn't. So, we turned around and headed back to Oak Ridge! Since we really wanted to get in some hiking, we went to Haw Ridge. That turned out to be a good choice. Due to the recent rains, there were multitudes of mushrooms of various sizes and colors. Our #1 favorite was definitely the red-capped ones (upper left)! We enjoyed seeing the different puffballs, including this trio of
Gem-studded Puffballs (right).
W
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e also saw a pretty peach-colored
Coral Fungus (2nd left) and some bright
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yellow mushrooms growing on the forest floor.
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I was glad I had my tripod when I came across the log that had this bright orange slime mold growing on it!
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It wasn't all just fungi today, I did see a few wildflowers on the hike too.
Groundnut (right) is a fairly common summer wildflower
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vine that grows on the edges of woodlands. Another flower that grew in the low, wet areas along the trails was
Square-stemmed Monkeyflower (left).
So, despite a bad start today, our hike turned out to be very nice after all!