La Brea and Santa Monica

Today it was important to make ourselves scarce as Elizabeth and Gary expected three or four viewings by prospective buyers. So we decided, thanks to a tip from my friend Chris, to visit the LaBrea Tar Pits, only a short distance from the BH apartment. These pits have exposed the fossils of hundreds of animals that existed in the area as long as 40000 years ago. Any mastodon or sloth or sabre tooth tiger that wandered into these pits that have been spitting out asphalt since the ice age, became part of its history. It was the early nineteen hundreds, when locals who knew of the bountiful oil deposits, because of the obvious surface oil ponds, began to dig out a bonanza of fossils from the pits here. This was the beginnings of a century of archeological activity here. Today the work continues cataloging the thousands of artifacts housed in crates on the property. Methane gas continues to bubble to the surface of the asphalt pools that also have to be scooped up so they don't overflow. The smell of petroleum permeates the area. From LaBrea, we drove to the Santa Monica pier, parked and had lunch at Del Frisco's Grille right on Ocean Blvd. After a great lunch, we walked out on the pier always teeming with tourists. Following some brief shopping, we returned to BH. It was another quiet dinner at home and more fabulous California wine.