MycoVentures

I discovered MycoVentures when I was stumped with what to do with a largeish (10 person) group for my roommate’s birthday. Our friends like to plan unique and fun events, but through the years have started to run out of new places to go and new things to do. Introduce mushroom foraging…
We came up with the idea of mushroom foraging when my roommate’s bf mentioned that they had actually tried to go hunt for chanterelles earlier in the year, but were unsuccessful — they didn’t know exactly where to look, and they weren’t sure if the mushrooms they found were edible. So off I went to look for a professional who we could hire to help us with our foray! First stop was MSSF — the Mycological Society of San Francisco. The person there referred me to David Campbell, and I found his website with a quick search.
I worked with David through email to coordinate a half day mushroom foray up near Point Reyes. I thought it was pretty affordable — about $ 300 for our group, and there was an add-​on option to have a cooking lesson — but we had other plans after so we passed.
On the day of, David was already waiting in the Inverness Store parking lot when we arrived, and he was very friendly and humored us as we surprised my roommate with what we were doing that day. He was the perfect guide for us — we were a bunch of mushroom newbies, super excited to find any sized mushroom, but we’re also pretty nerdy — a bunch of Stanford grads with tons of questions and wanting to learn details about different mushrooms. He was able to give us explanations about where to look for mushrooms, the anatomy of a mushroom, identify mushrooms and whether they’re edible, and took us to some proven spots where we found a bunch of porcinis to take home to eat. It was late in the season for porcini mushrooms, but David said that he enjoys going out to places where people who aren’t knowledgeable about mushrooms have gone picking — because then we find the hidden mushrooms they couldn’t find and the other less-​known mushrooms that can be just as safe and delicious.
I highly recommend MycoVentures! The only caveat is that his email response speed can vary a wildly, because he’s often out all day on forays, out of the country on forays, and doesn’t seem the type to check email a lot. Sometimes emails responses were very prompt, and sometimes a week would go by without a response — but not to worry, he still showed up at our designated time and we had a great time.