best advice from an admittedly non-resident and formerly very suspicious ground-gazing longhaired stranger driving with faraway plates, year after year for weeks at a time up and down not really doing anything else, would be to move to the Seattle area.

large early cyan patches were only found in disturbed but still rather wild and woody areas, on and at the bottom of slopes. and in woody grass not far away.

the Valley of the Gods, which shows up as a road on Federal Way google maps and even has street view of the entrance, was observed on many consecutive years up to around 10 years ago and was and probably still is self perpetuating and undisturbed. its a patch 30'x at least 60', an unused path/ditch 5' wide with steep slopes along it covered by decaying leaves and logs and twigs and small trees and a few medium trees. because of the slope, it seems trees have a hard time staying upright there, so the whole place is decaying deciduous trees and replacements and it's been that way for quite a while. the other places where they were found in the Seattle area were in similar areas.

no caps were ever taken. they were left mycelium undisturbed (except for some "experimental work" ) gills down in um...large numbers...and it wasn't a problem.

perhaps some of this difficulty in finding them is related to other people not finding them...bit of a dilemma...went to Borders to see the new Stamets book in 96 where he mentioned azures and Astoria and i went straight there...listened to the local radio morning shows talking about all the people who were arrested for picking mushrooms yesterday...found one only by accident...next to the outhouse...they are strong...