A Berry Good Weekend

Our theme for this weekend seemed to be "how many berries can we stuff in our faces before we throw up?" We never actually found out the answer to that question, but we did both experience berry-overload at various points during the weekend. Saturday we took a trip up to Huckleberry Mountain specifically to pick it's namesake berries. But as you can see from the handful, we didn't find just huckleberries.

Here's a photo-montage of the various, non-huck yummies we found along the trail.

Saskatoon (aka, Western Serviceberry)Because we left the plant guide in the car, assuming that we'd be able to easily identify any huckleberries we found along the trail, we were initially confused about whether or not these were hucks or not. Turns out they're not. Also turns out they don't taste very good. Not that they're inedible, just rather bland.

ThimbleberryThese were the real treasure we discovered along the trail. Incredibly sweet and yummy, we were amazed that other hikers had apparently been ignoring them. Not that we minded. Sonja and I were happy to exploit the other hikers' disinterest in these little gems.

Clasp-leaf Twisted Stalk (aka, Watermelon Berries)Another surprise were all the uneaten watermelon berries we saw. Either the other hikers along the trail were so intent on the huckleberries that they just didn't care about all the rest, or not many people around here know how good these things are. Oh well, more for us!

We also saw a couple berries that we did not try, mostly cuz they looked like eating them would give us a gastronomic experience we'd rather avoid. Here are two of those.

QueencupI don't know about you, but this just looks like a berry you don't want to eat. We didn't know what it was until we got back to the car and looked it up. All the guide says is that these neat little berries are "inedible". No fun descriptions of all the nasty things that might happen to someone who decides to try eating one. Oh well...

Utah Honeysuckle (aka, twinberries)The guide didn't actually say whether or not these berries were edible. But something just didn't look right about them, so we left them alone. Of course, we've made decisions like that about odd-looking fruits we've encountered before. During our trip to Hawaii, we hiked out to the end of the NaPali Coast Trail and made camp on the beach. The entire time we were there we noticed these odd little non-descript, round, green, ping-pong ball sized fruits dropping off the trees left and right. When you opened one up it was bright orange inside. We made the decision they were probably poisonous and left them alone. When we got back to town the next day we were chatting with some other hikers and they asked if we gorged ourselves on all the ripe passionfruit falling off the trees along the beach. D'oh!

Regardless of whether or not we made a mistake in not eating the twinberries, we certainly enjoyed eating the rest.