Upon Request... Huckleberries!

Labor Day was a bit of bummer this year because we were supposed to go to Island Park with Dave's sisters but since Dave is getting over shingles (grown-up chicken pox, but a LOT more painful) we are exiled from all gatherings. So i had the brilliant idea of going huckleberry picking!! I made a few phone calls to my sister and her husband to find out where to go and to see if there would still be some out on the bushes.

After a drive up to Kelly Canyon and past the "certain spot" where they stop, we didn't see ANYTHING! So we kept driving a bit farther up the canyon, pulled off, then ventured into "the forest". When we got out of the car Dave says, "Um so I just came up here to humor you, I have NO idea what huckleberries look like, what kind of bush or tree they are on, or where to even look" well that made two of us. I made another call to my

sister who said they look just like blueberries but smaller and are on bushes like really low.

So onward we went. After we hiked on no trails for awhile, we started seeing some berries.. hurray!! We searched everywhere high and low (since we were late in the season the bushes must have grown taller into some kind of tree because there were a ton on tree looking things) because there were all kind of different berries (red, blue, white, large, small) so when we came upon a bunch we would squeeze one of them to make sure they were filled with the same "stuff" as our other huckleberries. Finally we look at our phones realizing it had already been about 2 and 1/2 hours so we started to head back. On our way back we made a couple stops one being our Bishop's garden. (A bishop leads a congregation) We were so proud of all the berries we picked so we pulled out our bucket to show him. When he looks in he says, "Oh those aren't huckleberries" we look at each other and ask ok what are they then? He says No idea.

We continue our drive home bummed that our berries aren't huckleberries but still pretty happy we collected so many AND they still tasted sweet. When we got home we immediately went upstairs to check out really just what kind of berries we got. We found the bush/tree leaves that the berries were on and the computer said we got some kind of berry called Deer-berry which said... "WARNING: poisonous". LOVELY Once we read

that we watched all our hard work go down the trash...

As we were searching for ticks we decided that for sure next time we will be going with people who KNOW what huckleberries look like and have been picking before.

PS... When we would squeeze the berries to see what came out it kind of looked like blueberry guts with some white stuff inside of it... Dave calls it cream which justifies EVERYTHING!