Daily Archives: October 2, 2021
Land Of The Lost. For Adults.
Jan and I headed out about 1pm for lunch at Los Ramirez once again. Just as delicious as always.
Then it was on down I-45 to the La Marque area to check out the reason that we’re now able to receive Amazon packages here at the rig just a few hours after we order them.
This is Amazon’s new Regional Distribution Center that just opened down in our area, just a few miles from our rig.
Coming soon from Amazon, We Deliver Before You Order!
Jan and I are looking forward to a new show on NBC called ‘La Brea’.
When a massive sinkhole opens in the middle of Los Angeles at the site of the La Brea Tar Pits and pulls hundreds of people and buildings into its depths, those who fall into it find themselves in a mysterious and dangerous primeval land, where they have no choice but to band together to survive. The show follows one family, broken up by the events, trying to get back together.
Sounds like kind of a Land Of The Lost for adults. With a lot better effects.
Can’t wait for the Sleestak to show up.
So following that theme, here’s a repost of our visit to the Tar Pits in April of 2010.
The The Tar Tar Pits…
This late breaking news just in…
We just found out our upcoming grandchild is a BOY!
His name is Landon.
Today we visited the La Brea Tar Pits, which strangely enough, is in the middle of Beverly Hills. And even stranger, or maybe funnier, The La Brea Tar Pits, actually translates as The The Tar Tar Pits, since “La Brea” means “The Tar”’ in Spanish. Thus the title of this blog.
Anyway, we got there about 11 and decided to eat lunch first at a Marie Callenders right next door, or as they call it in Beverly Hills, just ‘”Callenders”. Apparently ‘Marie’” isn’t fancy enough for Beverly Hills. Even if it is right next door to tar pits.
And this is not your average Marie Callender’s.
And the food was really upscale too. We both had the Trio lunch plate, which consisted of a gorgonzola-pear salad with walnuts and cranberries, a choice of soup, (Jan had potato cheese, I had chicken tortilla) and a warm turkey/cheese sandwich on focaccia bread. It was all really good. And we were so full we didn’t even have room for what Marie Callender’s, excuse me, Callender’s is famous for, pie. Then.
After lunch we walked next door to the Tar Pits. Before we even crossed the street we could smell the asphalt in the air. And walking into the park we could see the results of the asphalt, or al least, the simulated results.
The tar, along with methane gas, bubbles up from the ground and forms large pools. And it’s been doing this for tens of thousands of years. The oldest fossil found here has been dated to 38,000 years ago.
Then rainwater and dirt/grass/leaves accumulate on the surface, masking the tar. Animals com down to drink and get mired in the muck. And sometimes predators come to feast on the “stuckees” and get stuck themselves. Thus a wide range or predators and prey have been excavated from the tar here.
Here is an excavation that’s been under way for years, and tens of thousands of fossils have been found.
Here are the bones of a sabretooth cat that are in the process of being removed.
Many of these animals were much larger than their contemporaries. Here is a medium-sized sloth. And being medium-size, this sloth was only 7 feet high and weighed 1800 pounds!
And again,this ancient bison was much larger than the ones that live today.
This is an American camel, that become extinct over ten thousand years ago.
This is a mother Mastodon and her baby, found together in the tar.
And this is “Zed”, a 13 foot tall Columbian Mammoth, bigger than any elephant alive today
These are the bones of an American Lion, that was larger than any lion or tiger of today, and larger than the sabretooth cat from its own era.
This is the skeleton of a horse. What’s different about this is that horses died out in the Americas thousands of years ago, and didn’t return until brought over by the Spanish explorers in the 1500’s.
This short-faced bear was enormous. Larger than any bear today, it was a foot taller than any grizzly and probably weighed a thousand pounds more.
And this is the sabretooth cat. Sometimes incorrectly called a sabretooth tiger, it is actually closer to today’s housecats, rather than tigers.
This diorama shows a sabretooth trying to munch on a short-faced bear. I think the cat will probably end up as bear chow.
It was really amazing walking around here, thinking about all this going on right where we were standing 20 or 30 thousand years ago.
Leaving the Tar Pits we drove about a mile away to cruise the famous Rodeo Dr.
We saw a lot of expensive cars, and a lot of shops with names we couldn’t pronounce.
Guess I should have been more impressed, but I wasn’t.
Before we left the area, we stopped off at Callender’s once again, this time for pie to go. For later.
Tomorrow we’ll be attending two tapings of the Bonnie Hunt Show that will be shown Wednesday and Thursday of this week.
Lowell texted over a photo of their Halloween decorations for this year.
Bet it’s even better at night.
Thought For The Day:
It’s often very simple to be wise. Just think of something very stupid to say, and then just don’t say it.
