Piney Creek

This post has a lot of fungus in it. I’m not sorry.

It was an August morning with a very reasonable temperature, so I decided to go for a hike. I found Piney Creek Nature Preserve on AllTrails, thought it looked good enough and drove an hour to get there. The trail itself wasn’t the highlight of my visit. It wasn’t that difficult and there was only one very annoying stream crossing that would have not been so bad if it hadn’t rained recently. It was a fairly normal trail. However, it was the perfect place to do some macro photography.

I’ve recently gotten really into macro photography for some reason. It really started while taking pictures of spring flowers with my cell phone. Since then, I’ve been using my new Canon to do some fancy pictures as well.

Piney Creek Nature Preserve is located southeast of Chester, Illinois. A gravel road takes you through an Amish or Mennonite community to a random parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Then a short, mowed trail takes you to the main forested loop of the trail.

Jana Irving

I got distracted here by all the types of wildflowers.

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Some sort of thistle.

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I somehow did not get eaten alive by chiggers on this trail.

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Some kind of dogwood.

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I didn’t even notice the caterpillar on this plant until I looked at the photos after I got home. Happy accident.

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This bee did not care that I was near it.

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The only bridge, unfortunately.

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First of many mushrooms.

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One of the easy water crossings.

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Some sort of slime mold, I think. Maybe, Red raspberry slime?

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Luna moth.

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Fungi is really hard to identify. Google gave me a ton of different options for this one.

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Some sort of Amanita. They are mostly all poisonous.

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Adorable Russula.

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I have no idea how this picture turned out considering the weird position I was in to get it. Had to walk through a stream after this.

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Is it supposed to be fuzzy?

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Cute little thing.

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Cute but probably poisonous.

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There were also some pictographs and petroglyphs along the trail.

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A deer, probably.

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Luckily it was easy crossing the stream here.

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Last fungus.

The Piney Creek Nature Preserve was a happy find. I expected a pretty normal trail though the forest. It was a good hike and somehow full of fungus.

Check out my next update where I will be exploring Poverty Point!

or

Check out more public lands!