Bodega Head
Given the mountains and valleys around here, sometimes I forget that I live only 27 miles away from the ocean (it’s 20 miles from where I work). That’s compared to about 160 miles when I lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
On Thursday after work I decided to take advantage and drive out to Bodega Head, part of the Sonoma Coast State Beaches. It was a beautiful day, and I just happened to have my camera with me. I’m finally starting to adjust to the sun setting after 8pm, giving me three hours of sun to do anything I choose. What a gift.
The purple-blue stuff on the sand below are thousands of these small jellyfish that got washed shore. They look like discarded plastic suction cups, especially when they dry out, which is amusing to me, to think sometimes how “dirty” nature can be. Or entropic.
Up close they look just like this, though I’d say these were about an inch or two wide. Update: Terrie informs us that these particular jellyfish are by-wind-sailors.
My very first trip out to Bodega Bay was when I came up to Sebastopol to see about this job at O’Reilly. Terrie drove with me to get some live crab from one of the fisherman out there. She boiled them, and we devoured them back at her place. Since then I’ve been known to pick up a dungeness crab (already boiled) from Andy’s Market on the way home (usually only $4 a pound!) and eat just that for dinner.
So I couldn’t help but want to do the same, except this time I got one already cooked, which I shelled and added to some penne pasta with artichokes, tomatoes, green onions and a cream sauce.
Those jellies are By Wind Sailors. Supposedly, when they are abundant they can be indicators of a dry winter to follow. That would be a new experience for you in California, eh?!