What to do in Mendocino: Mushroom season, restaurants, more

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Loss of life cap. Pine spike. Shaggy mane. Hideous Gomphidius.

No, these aren’t the names of punk bands out of your native highschool — they’re simply a number of the mushroom varieties that develop in Northern California.

Mushroom season is underway in Mendocino County, dwelling to roughly 3,000 mushroom varieties (500 of which you’ll be able to safely eat!). In different phrases: In the event you wanted an excuse to make the 500-mile journey from L.A. to Mendocino’s beautiful stretch of shoreline, that is it.

On this version of Escapes, you’ll discover just a few methods to embrace the cottage-core vibes of mushroom season and develop into a fungi professional.

The place are you touring this fall? Ship me your journey tales and suggestions, and I’ll cross them alongside in a future version of Escapes.

🍄 Develop into a mushroom professional

A woman walks through a lush section of a botanical garden filled with trees, ferns and other greenery.

Greater than 160 species of mushrooms develop on the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in the course of the fall and winter months.

(Roxanne Perkins)

Why do mushrooms love Mendocino a lot? What’s the distinction between an amber-staining Agaricus and a gemmed Amanita? And what’s so particular about mushrooms, anyway?

You’ll obtain a crash course on all issues fungi in the event you attend one of many many mushroom excursions supplied all through Mendocino County this month and past.

The Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, dwelling to greater than 160 species of mushrooms in the course of the fall and winter months, is a superb place to start out your mushroom schooling. Each Monday from Nov. 14 by way of Dec. 26, naturalist and mycologist Mario Abreu will lead visitors on a two-hour “mushroom stroll” across the grounds. On the tour, visitors will discover ways to establish several types of mushroom and hear mushroom lore.

Reservations are required. Tickets price $15 per participant and embody gardens admission for the day. Observe: There is no such thing as a tour on Dec. 5.

Can’t make one of many Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens’ mushroom walks? Different Mendocino establishments equivalent to the Stanford Inn, Brewery Gulch Inn and the Jug Deal with Creek Farm and Nature Heart additionally host mushroom teaching programs.

🍽️ Eat your fill of mushrooms

An exterior shot of a two-story building with wood shingles and red trim, surrounded by shrubs and trees.

The Michelin-starred Harbor Home Inn is only one of many Mendocino County eating places with mushrooms on the menu.

(Brendan McGuigan)

After studying the ins and outs of Mendocino’s mushrooms, you’ll doubtless be hungry and wanting to pattern the area’s wild bounty your self.

Listed below are just a few locations the place you could find mushroom-forward dishes across the county proper now:

  • Harbor Home Inn: The Michelin-starred restaurant contains sweet cap mushroom ice cream on its pattern menu.
  • Fog Eater Cafe: Discover fried blue oyster mushrooms on the menu at this vegetarian restaurant. The Mendocino Village spot additionally hosts a particular Mushroom Dinner on Nov. 10.
  • The Bewildered Pig market: Top off on “medicinal mushroom cookies” in your method by way of Philo, Calif.
  • The Stanford Inn: An ideal jumping-off level for experiencing mushroom season, this inn presents a “medicinal mushroom breakfast” and a mushroom tasting menu for dinner. Extra information on the inn’s mushroom programming right here.

🚂 Experience the Mushroom Prepare

Two people look out a window of a train as it chugs through a wooded hillside area.

On Nov. 12, the Skunk Prepare will transport vacationers alongside its redwood path to a celebration in honor of Mendocino’s mushroom season.

(Go to Mendocino County)

In the event you get pleasure from touring in Northern California, likelihood is you’ve heard of Fort Bragg’s Skunk Prepare, a staggeringly photogenic rail route by way of the redwood forest that dates again to the 1800s.

On Nov. 12, the well-known Skunk Prepare will rework into the Mushroom Prepare in honor of Mendocino’s mushroom season. The prepare will whisk passengers by way of the large bushes, starting at Fort Bragg Depot and ending at Glen Blair Junction. Friends will get the prospect to attempt mushroom dishes, style wines, get pleasure from s’mores round a campfire and extra.

Reservations are required. Tickets price $150 with a $50 further whiskey improve, with proceeds benefiting MendoParks.

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🚗Street journey tip

A man carries a full cardboard box to an Airstream with the word "Outdoorsy" on it.

Employees member Ryan Quinn carts a field to an Outdoorsy Airstream.

(Brant Ward / Related Press)

Love the concept of tenting in an RV however nervous about driving one all the way in which to Mendocino or past? Right here’s some excellent news: You don’t have to maneuver a hulking automobile alongside California’s freeway system to benefit from the RV expertise.

Corporations equivalent to RVshare and Outdoorsy function like an “Airbnb for RVs,” Sally French experiences for the Related Press. A lot of their choices could be dropped off on the website of your alternative — with the caveat that some campgrounds could ban RV supply (so test beforehand). Be taught extra right here.

Two smiling, waving young women sit atop a yellow and red vehicle shaped like a hot dog.

Hotdoggers Keila Garza and Abbey Rank sit atop the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

(Julia Carmel / Los Angeles Occasions)

Talking of highway journeys, few know the freeways of the Golden State higher than Keila Garza and Abbey Rank, two “hotdoggers” liable for driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile up and down the West Coast.

They’re a part of the meat firm’s hotdogger program, which enlists just lately graduated school college students to drive Oscar Mayer’s six Wienermobiles and make appearances at grocery retailer openings, weddings, funerals and different occasions.

It’s a troublesome gig to attain. “Hundreds of individuals apply yearly, however solely 12 are chosen to drive the huge scorching canine, which suggests the job is more durable to get than an acceptance letter to Harvard College,” my colleague Julia Carmel experiences.

I’ll depart you with this enjoyable reality: Extra folks have been to house than have pushed the Wienermobile, Carmel notes within the story. Learn extra right here.

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