On the road to Los Angeles

Okay...it's not far, but I did have to drive on two different freeways to get there. Our trip today is brought to you by the manufacturers of NoAd sunscreen. Thanks to their crappy product, my kids are one burn closer to skin cancer (insert mommy guilt here) and our weekend plans to lounge around the pool and be lazy were thwarted. Being stuck in the house with three children arguing and whining didn't sound like a ton of fun, so I needed an alternative that didn't involve large amounts of sunshine. When James announced that he was carpooling to work today, I jumped at the opportunity to snag his little 38 mpg car and drive the kids up to use our museum passes in LA. I've been promising them a trip, but I'm boycotting longer trips thanks to my gas guzzling truck and my propensity for being a cheap ass.

Normally we head up to Exposition Park and visit the Natural History Museum and California Science Center, but today our destination was a new one. They've resumed their summer excavation of Pit 91 so we headed up to the George C. Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. The minute that we got out of the car the kids found a fenced off tar pit in the parking lot and they immediately bombarded me with non-stop questions. Why is it bubbling? Where is it coming from? Is it hot? Are there dinosaurs in there? Why is there trash in there? Why would an animal go in there? Why couldn't they get out? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Stop shouting at me and wait until we get into the museum young ones, and all of your questions will be answered.


We wandered around inside of the museum for a few minutes before deciding to heading outside to Pit 91 to check out the excavation before it closed for the day. We carefully studied the chart that listed the Ice Age fossils that have been found this season...sabertooth cat, ground sloth and coyote among others and we matched up the colored flags to the bones down in the excavation pit. Moving on, we took some time to look at some of the other pits around the park and enjoyed watching some big bubbles form in one of the larger pits.



Starting to melt from the heat and realizing that we were supposed to be inside and out of the sun today, we walked back toward the museum. Perfect timing, we walked in right as the educational movie was starting so all of the questions that the kids had were answered, and then some. After the movie we wandered over to the paleontology lab and then onto a great display of over 400 Dire Wolf skulls, which represent just a small portion of the number that they have discovered at Rancho La Brea.