It's been a tough spring for most morel mushroom hunters in Iowa. The cool, dry weather has made for a limited crop of the coveted fungi.
Knowing they probably wouldn't find many, Deb Frye and Tawnya Ryberg still spent a couple of hours Wednesday night searching the Cottonwood Recreational Area near Saylorville Lake.
It's what you do when you love those distinctive, pitted mushrooms, which have a short season of just a couple weeks between April and May.
"Imagine if you could only have tacos two weeks out of the year," Frye said. "That's how it is with morels. It's delicious, but it's limited — so everyone wants to get their hands on them."