Our gloriously private perch by the lake

Today was a luxuriously sunny, warm (mostly) day when soaking in the beauty all around us enveloped us in peaceful relaxation.

Beautiful, but not edible.

We walked around this morning looking for mushrooms.  We found dozens — beautiful ones, but definitely not edible.  I also found a few small suilli that weren’t worth cooking.  Then I found some that looked like puffballs.  But when I cut them open, there was the outline of a mushroom-to-be inside — a BIG danger signal!

These looked like puffballs until I cut them in half. The outline of a developing mushroom — probably an amanita — was clearly visible inside.

Then later on, we were walking through a field and I found one, genuine puffball, with a pure white, undifferentiated interior.  It did have a couple of bug holes in it, but I cut them out.

Then I sliced them, dipped them in egg, sprinkled them with Lawry’s seasoning salt, then dredged them in cornmeal and fried them.  They were superb!   I stuffed them in pitas and we had an unexpected gourmet lunch!

All of the surrounding campers have left so we feel like we have the woods to ourselves.

A true puffball. Inset shows the pure white interior.

But I got a wonderful surprise this afternoon.  A woman walked up to our Casita and introduced herself.  Her name is Jean and she had just pulled her little Casita into a spot up the hill from us.  She lives nearby in Marietta and travels with a parrot.  She had to leave to hand feed her parrot, as he is old.  But I plan to stop by and say hello and hopefully meet her parrot tomorrow!

Puffball cleaned and ready to cook

Puffballs in the pan!

Puffball sandwiches for lunch!

Jean’s Casita up the hill

Sunny pouting to come outside

Down by the water

RapidWasher to the rescue!

We did have a little excitement after leaving Cherokee.  The sewer outlet was pretty high up and we didn’t realize that we didn’t get a full gray water dump.  Since we always travel with empty tanks, we never close our gray water valve.  Well, this time we should have.  When we stopped for lunch, we discovered the bathroom rug was soaked with backed up gray water.

So last night I soaked the rug in a bucket of soapy water, then gave it a workover with my RapidWasher this morning.

It worked beautifully.  My white fluffy bathroom rug is white and fluffy again!