Saturday Ty and I decided to go to Woolly Hollow State Park, approximately 25 miles away from us near Greenbrier, AR.
We rented a tandem kayak and paddled all around the lake.
We found many spiral lumps of jelly with a very thick membrane. I thought they looked like pod people, and something deep down in my instincts wanted to paddle away from the things as fast as I could. Tyrone is much more curious, so he prodded it a little, but we didn’t see much movement. We ended up seeing about 10 of these jelly pods, some extending 3 feet down into the water. Some pods from different angles looked like clear brains with air bubbles inside of them.
The lifeguard on duty said they’re related to jellyfish, but a google search made it very difficult to find on that route. I finally googled “animal jelly blob”, and found an article about them from Japan. There is no English common name for the organism, but the Japanese call it “Oomari-kokemush”. I suggest the English name “Coke Mush,” as southern people will dig the name, especially with the brown bubbles.
As we found more and more, I became less and less afraid of them, and even touched one near the shore when no one was looking.
As we were leaving, we saw this sign at the snack bar:
It sounded like a truly southern concoction, and Ty could not resist purchasing one.
Ty and I were reminded of the ABC Saturday morning cartoons “Sunshine on a Stick,” encouragement to eat healthy snacks.
Ty really liked it. It was really very sour at first. We started devising martini recipes which involve pickle pops as garnish.
On the way back home we ate at Backwoods BBQ in Greenbrier, AR. We had some awesome tamales, which later we found out were frozen! Also, like many things in the south, they were served with saltine crackers! The chopped pork was really good, the ribs were just OK.
