La Brea Tar Pits and Venice Beach

On our last day in LA we went to two more iconic spots – the La Brea Tar Pits and Venice Beach.

I was dinosaur crazy as a little girl. I read all about Roy Chapman Andrews in a set of children’s books we had and bought little plastic dinosaurs with my own money. Naturally, I just had to go see the tar pits when we were in LA in spite of Ken (and others) saying they weren’t very impressive. And I suppose they aren’t. They’re located in a small park in west central LA and aren’t much to visually look at. Ah, but the imagination… There is also a very good museum showing some of the bones found and tracing the history of the site.

A mammoth entrapped in the tar.
Asphalt was quarried here in the 1800’s and rainwater filled the resulting basin

Flagged bones in Pit 91	Lump of tar with embedded bones in Observation Pit
Stored tar lumps from the expansion of the art museum next door	Columbian Mammoth from the pits

 

Then it was on to Venice Beach. We were a little confused about where Venice Beach was, but finally found a (pricey) parking lot and there we were. First stop was lunch (I never go far without it). After briefly looking around, we chose the Sidewalk Café and it was very good.

Ken perusing the menu at the Sidewalk Café

Ocean Front walk	Skate board park
Ocean Front Walk	Sand artist on the walk

From Venice Beach, we took CA-1 north to Topanga and drove through Topanga Canyon again, northbound this time, and back to the hotel.

I no longer remember where we ate supper that night but lunch was relatively late and large so we may have skipped it.

[written 12/30/13]