Directions

From about 34° Latitude and 118° Longitude: If you head East on the 210, South on the 2, South on the 5, South on the 110, West on the 10, take the Northbound exit on La Brea Ave., head West on Wilshire Blvd., and turn North on Curson you will discover a familiar scent, one that awakens memories of road pavers and hot tar. Accompanying this pungent stench is something different because there’s history here. About a mile from Beverly Hills and within sight of the world famous Hollywood sign is a place where Mammoths and Sabertooths, American Lions and Sloths once roamed, a place where tar boils out of the earth effectively transporting you back more than 30,000 years. This is the La Brea Tar Pits and this is where I spent time with my children the other day.

The Lake Pit (look close and you can see the bubbles):

B's enthusiasm for Mammoths was planted by the movie Ice Age.

His knowledge of these behemoths was cultivated by library books and bedtime stories.

Here are fossils of the American Lion.

Just think, thousands of Millennia ago, Lions roamed the Americas. Absolutely staggering!

Sabertooth and Sloth:

This last image was captured in the Sculpture Garden beside LACMA ... The artist (Alexander Liberman) calls it Phoenix.

I must have been hungry because to me, it looked like Penne Pasta.

Still, I thought it was cool:

(By the way, the distance in time equaled about 20-25 minutes.)