Yesterday I hiked into one of my favorite places. A place where seeing another human never happened from the first time I hiked in there in the mid 1970's till last year when I saw someone in there 3 times. The most recent was yesterday when I came across the stuff in the photos below. Also, there is a trailer in a wide spot on the road that leads to this area that is starting to look trashy that was not there last week. Photos show some really strange stuff. Looks like some kind of fungus and a can of bear spray and a tiny cedar sapling in the yellow bucket. Later I saw them hiking out, but they did not see me. No trails in this part of hike. Why would someone be collecting fungus?

Whew, at least no pictures or your toes were involved in the creation of this thread.

The only fungus I think of that has a criminal connection is Psilocybin.

No cow Patties. No magic schrooms

Aliens eat that stuff like chicken…

Maybe for making an old-fashioned homemade medication?

Possibly for crafts or decoration. I've used various sorts of dried moss and fungi on my diorama.

Wild ginseng?

Sounds like you have a case of the Hippies. I would leave some soap and a hair brush next to the fungus. Should scare any self respecting hippie out of the area.

We don’t have wild ginseng around here and these guys are more like pigs than hippies. I went back to take some photos of their camp, but their vehicle was not there. I was involved in building this road up there back somewhere between 1984 and 1986. It’s quite remote and a place mostly known by locals only. I have never seen anything like this before, other than in photos from other parts of the country. This isn’t a recreational forest and tourists rarely if ever make it up here. I’ve never seen anyone collecting fungus like this before and drug manufacture is the only thing that comes to mind, but it’s also a subject I have zero knowledge of. There is a guy that I’ve seen sleeping in his pickup some during the winter the last couple of years, but leaves zero evidence that he was ever there. These guys are pigs. Trash all over the place and well into the trees and they were not there last week. This reeks of illegal activity to me. A couple of photos of their camp.

I see rigs like that, with all the accompanying clutter, come into local grocery stores and Walmarts. Watching one particular couple I see intermittently, pull into a local grocery store, I see the male driver get out of the beat up pick up truck, walk back to the equally beat up tow behind camper, open the door, proceed to start unloading various crates, propane bottles, gear etc... and then an elderly lady and a 3 legged dog finally have enough room to make it out of the door.

They stay for @ 45 minutes to an hour, usually buy a few items, and then reverse the process before leaving. I can't know for certain, but I assume that they live on some land in nearby forests, and come into town to buy a few things and maybe to use the grocery store bathroom to clean up in.

Times are tough for some folks now, and there are those of us who might prefer some isolation or just peace and quiet.

Hard to see the photos on my small phone screen, but I think I see a flower pot with flowers in it. Certainly possible, but it's hard to imagine criminals stopping to decorate a campsite with flowers.

It's probably worth monitoring the situation, but short of seeing some more convincing evidence of criminal activity, I probably wouldn't lose any sleep over a remote campsite.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
Possibly for crafts or decoration. I've used various sorts of dried moss and fungi on my diorama.

Oh, you don't need to mess with all that now... we have something for when those 'uh oh' moments happen.

@Modern Day Savage - Took me a minute...

So the question that first comes to mind is who owns the land?

^ yup, I’d have called the owner and then the sheriff to run them off if that’s what the owner wanted.

Are those propane tanks full?

Possibly Tweakers.

It’s Forest Service land. Maybe they think it’s their land to do as they please. That’s a mistake around here.

I had to Google tweakers. Seems like I had to Google that before, and couldn’t remember what they were. I thought they were gay men. Oh well.

These photos will end up with the Forest Service and the Sheriffs office. This kind of thing isn’t tolerated around here and to me it ruins the experience of hiking around this area. I found trash in a meadow that doesn’t even have any kind of trail to it and one has to know about it to find it. Public land doesn’t mean it’s ok to squat on it and trash it.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...-uk-forests-of-fungi

Above article suggests people eat fungi, and others bag and sell them to restaurants.