La Brea Tarpits!

I usually visit Kristina and her family about once a year. Normally when I go, my only requests while I'm there are to go to the beach a couple of times and to go on a long walk everyday. Other than that I just hang out with Kristina, Tom, Andrew and Madeline and go wherever they were already planning on going.

This trip was different though. Since Lara and her kiddos don't get to California nearly as often, Lara wanted to take advantage of being in the area and do as much as they could while there. Since I was there at the same time as they were, I did all of the things that they did.

Out of all of the times I've been to Kristina's house, I've never been to Los Angeles, but this trip I finally got to go to LA and it was interesting!

Our first stop in L.A. were the La Brea Tarpits. It was pretty cool! It was a little underwhelming. I think I was expecting more active, oozing asphalt coming out of the ground, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Basically, animals got caught in the asphalt and were never able to escape. They would eventually die but the asphalt would preserve their fossils. They have found some fossils dating back to 20,000 years ago.

There was a sign on the property telling of a modern day story of an animal getting caught in the asphalt. One day in the early 1900s (before there were fences or so many buildings around the area), some elephants escaped from a nearby circus or zoo and one of the elephants got stuck in the asphalt. When the circus or zoo keepers found the elephant, they were afraid they were not going to be able to get it out because it was so stuck. But thankfully (and I don't remember exactly how) but they were able to save the elephant from dying in the asphalt.

Some of the kinds of fossils they've found in the asphalt.

They have excavations going on continuously looking for new fossils.

There's an active oozing asphalt spot in the water.

It just looked like it needed to be hugged. 

It started raining while we were there, so our time was cut a little short. Although the tarpits (or asphalt pits as they technically should be called) were a little underwhelming to me, it was still interesting!

Stay tuned for more posts about my trip...