We were therefore pleased to fly on to Los Angeles where top temperatures were only in the mid 20s. Our hotel, The Beverly Laurel, is a fully renovated motor inn that has been tastefully decorated in retro 1966 style. And the attached Swingers Diner (where Jim feels at home...) is like something out of Happy Days, with friendly staff, delicious food and good coffee.
On our only day in this sprawling city we walked to the famous LA Farmers Markets, which have been operating since 1934. There we spent time wandering through fresh food stalls and up into the Grove, a very modern avenue-like shopping centre. Penny even found a shop that exclusively sells stickers for scrapping and card making!
Penny and the 'Travel Angel'
At The Grove
One of many stalls at the Farmers Market
Then to the La Brea Tar Pits, a real highlight. Here, starting 50,000 years ago, tiny insects right through to enormous mammoths - an entire ecosystem in fact - became stuck in liquid asphalt (tar) that bubbled up from underground. And since the early 1900s paleontologists have been digging up fossils. During this time they have discovered some 650,000 species of plant and animal.
Inside the museum are the almost complete skeletons of saber-toothed cats, ground sloths, Colombian mammoths and dire wolves (of which 4,000 skulls have been found), to name a few. In the Fossil Lab, paleontologists and volunteers work every day of the year, sifting through and cleaning fossils for identification.
Fossil Lab
Outside the museum are the tar pits from which the fossils were recovered. The current ongoing Project 23 involves the identification of fossil deposits discovered during construction of the nearby County Museum of Art, which were placed into 23 enormous wooden crates. And all because 1,000 feet beneath the entire area is a sea of asphalt/oil that bubbles up from time to time, almost anywhere.
Recreation of a mammoth collapsing into the tar
Project 23 crates full of fossils for identification
Pit showing actual embedded fossils with asphalt leaching from underground
Lamp post sculpture on our way back
Tomorrow we board the beautiful Celebrity Eclipse for our 31 day Mexico/South America journey!
