Daddy Daycare Goes to La Brea Tar Pits

I had planned to take Cassius to the La Brea Tar Pits on a Friday. Corrie suggested that I invite his buddy Ari, and the arrangements were made.

As a child on trips from Sacramento to LA, we'd sometimes go to parks, like Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, and Universal Studios. But sometimes we'd do what my mom called "science trips", and go to Griffiths Observatory and the Tar Pits.

Now, it was my turn to show my own son this spot, the only Ice Age dig site being worked in an urban environment in the entire world. And here, we're not talking about some outskirts of a metro area: the site is on Wilshire Blvd a few short miles from downtown LA in a very tony neighborhood, full of beautiful homes that likely sell with at least seven spots in the price. The LACMA is on the west end of the grounds, and the newly finished Museum of Motion Picture Arts is on the north-west corner.

Above is one of the images that visitors will always hold onto. Outside the museum proper, on the grounds, is one of the largest natural asphalt pits surrounded by humans on earth. It shows the reality of what ancient animals would have witnessed: a tasty pond with a muddy bottom. Unfortunately for anyone who steps into the water, what looked like mud was actually asphalt, pure petroleum that's been pooling and mixing with other minerals. It looks like tar, even if technically it isn't.

An unsuspecting animal would go in for a cooling drink, and that was that. They'd get their stuck, and as they struggled, they would get themselves in deeper and deeper, and eventually die of thirst. Above not pictured were a baby mammoth and the other parent, anguishing onshore.

The museum building is an LA icon. LA, being so new, relatively, that iconic structures tend to be museums and opera houses. I guess that's not so different from other places, right?

Anyway, both kids are really into mammoths and saber-toothed cats, so the trip seemed like an easy homerun. I mean, really:

The following is the Columbian Mammoth, the largest mammoth, and possibly the largest proboscidean ever. Look how it towers over the boys:

These mammoths were not the wooly kind; those were smaller, but still mega fauna. The Columbian ones, though, holy cow:

An interesting fact about natural asphalt pits like the ones found here (if you own one of those houses nearby, don't dig too deep in your backyard!), is that the number of predator remains far outnumber the remains of prey or proboscideans. What would happen is something would get stuck and then start making a racket. A predator would show up, think there was an easy meal, and get themselves trapped. On and on it went, until predators outnumber prey something like 70 to 1.

They had an entire wall of dire wolf skulls:

The museum innards is a circle around an open air atrium in the center, and I'm sure it offers workers in the facility a respite during a workday.

On a walk around the grounds, one can see into the atrium from above, and the ferns help establish an ancient feel:

There were statues on the grounds, and the boys played on them appropriately. Strangely the work very similar matching outfits: synthetic material soccer jerseys. Cass wore one of Corrie's jerseys from Austin when she may have been ten; Ari wore a kids Denmark National team jersey.

In the giftshop, I saw stickers for Pit 91, like it was its own austere logo. As we explored the grounds after spending some money, we found Pit 91. There had been over a hundred pits located and excavated over the years, and all were named by their chronological order of study.

Pit 91 turned out to be the biggest repository of fossils in the whole place. Check out the chart below of what was found in Pit 91 up to this point:

The natural asphalt is a perfect preservation material, and because it works so well, so much information has been retained. the years from about 45,000 years back to about 14,000 years back is pretty well mapped out, for the LA area, anyway.

Here I feel required to give credit where it's due: George Allen Hancock was the oil man developing the rancho he had rights to when the first fossils were discovered. In the area where those fossils were discovered, he stopped digging for oil and started digging for fossils. He had two types of crews working his land, and to this day, the millions of things pulled out of the bitumen were done by hand, starting back in 1914 and continuing to this day.

Hancock gifted the land to the city to protect it.

Afterwards, upon ascertaining what the little dudes wanted for lunch, we found a proper restaurant and grubbed down.

The souvenir I got for Ari was reasonably priced and very neat: a die-sized glassy-jewel shaped like a movie diamond. Cass wanted the following badass mammoth puzzle, which he finished in an hour and a half after we got home. (It was more expensive than I usually budget for souvenirs, but it's very cool, so I made the call.)

At the giftshop I looked for something for Camille. I also usually look for books, and they tend to be other than the kid souvenirs. This time, as I was trying to manage the boys, I picked up a book about a baby girl mammoth who wants to be just like her dad, and I realized I'm a sucker:

It's cute. Daddy Daycare Field Trip was a success!

Bike Adventures Summer 2022

Cass's old bike died a while back, and we got him a nice, legit kid's bike. Not an inexpensive version, quite the opposite, really. At first he didn't like it; in fact he was terrified. But eventually this summer I got to take him out without my own bike, to help him remember that he knows how to ride.

He got it soon enough, and we went out together for a nice ride to get ice cream treats at the pier. The next day, Cass tells me, "So, dad, I just remembered that I love my bike and I want to ride everyday."

And my heart in my chest says, "HELL YES, BOYO!" The next day we went in the morning. And we went in the afternoon. We rode down 3rd street to Caesar Chavez Park at the 710, rode around the back of the park, then under the freeway to the river ride, then around the marina to the stairwell up to the walk/ride-way at the convention center, which is a quick jaunt home.

The first ride Cass has us backtrack from the stairwell at the convention center. It was awesome in any case.

Trying to stop for pictures is always fun.  Or difficult. Or both.

Ditched the helmets

Below he got himself going on his own:

I accidentally took this picture, but it turned out pretty good:

I was inspired to try my "Under the Bridge" idea again:

Cass was like: "Why does it smell like pee-pee right here?" I said, That's a good question, dude, but these fine folks gotta go somewhere. Trying to have a convo about real stuff...

My bike blew its tire on the second ride, and it's currently getting fixed. Cass still wants to ride every day, and I'm certainly willing to oblige him.

He gets a look at deep water at a spit near the Catalina landing, and that awe will never leave him:

Texas Amidst this Alternate Summer

This summer has been a heady blend of sickness and driving, sweat and lack of AC, hard work, and explosions. Some of those all in the same place, or heading to that place.

I sent this picture to Dan right after getting a text from him having to do a work thing early (for him). The metal bar structure is the remnants of the wedding makeover the slab from former bunkhouse was given back in October of 2020. Stephanie and Michael got married right there.

A bunkhouse used to be on the spot, only to grow decrepit and collapse in a storm. Some talk is about putting an outdoor kitchen area there, mainly to help with the reunions.

Anywho...

Our summer plans of birthright travels had to be adjusted because of many scheduling factors, but eventually we left the Southland for points east. Well, north of east, and then due cardinally towards sunrise. Off to the Harrison Farm outside of Clarendon, TX, in the panhandle region, for the 4th of July and a work week for Corrie and Peter, her younger brother.

We stopped for dinner that first night at the Roadkill Cafe in Seligman, Arizona, and a memory of a t-shirt my mom had that upset my brother so came back to me when I saw the slogan again: "You kill it, we grill it!" (My brother's cat was run down when we were kids, and the shirt, likely from this same exact restaurant made him sad and angry.)

Outside was the remnants of some Arizona territorial ruins: 

And you could explore inside as well. There was also a paddywagon, which Camille enjoyed:

There were a bunch of old rusted-out hulks of cotton gins, tractors and automobiles, and the gins I found confusing: the area, while not the full-fledged Sonoran Desert like on I-10, does not seem conducive to an agrarian lifestyle.

We did the drive there in two days, planning on making the return trip more relaxing with plenty of roadside attractions to be seen and time taken, as we weren't in a rush to get home (that's usually the case).

**

I've had these pictures up on the draft version of this post for nearly two weeks by now. Things have happened, like Cass getting great with his new bike and demanding bike rides all the time (woo-freaking-hoo!); daddy daycare field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits; and a few other various things. 

Since I didn't start this right away, the whole post will be a hot mess of sweaty memories and go-nowhere anecdotes, but what can you do?

The first real night we were visiting (by "real" I mean the first night after we woke up there for the first time on the trip; not 'Night Zero', aka 'arrival night') Corrie and I were talking in the bright lights of the Big Barn when we were visited by some kick-ass arachnids:

It was my first time seeing scorpions chilling in the wild, doing their thing. There were four that we saw, all crawling either to or from the large seem in the concrete slabs separating the inside from the outside. None were more than an inch long, which made them quite dainty and cute, but aren't they more dangerous at such a small size?

There were festivities for the 4th in the small town of Clarendon. We were doing the things Corrie had done as a kid on her summer journeys to the Farm for 4ths of July's past. First was a parade, where every float threw candy at the parade watchers.

Once the parade wrapped up, the Patriots Faire was set up at the Donley County courthouse, once dubbed the "Jewel of the Panhandle" once construction was finished in the 1880s:

It is a pretty building.

Next was the turtle race. Er, races, as in plural, because there were four races, broken up by age group of contestants (0-4 years old; 5-8; 9-14; 15 and up). Each race took about 60 to 65 seconds, and they were riveting seconds, I tell you, more exciting than the name "turtle race" may evince.

Each race started after contestants placed their turtles into the hexagon above. That hexagon is situated in the middle of an intersection in town. Once all turtles are in the hex, it gets lifted and spirited away, and the turtles make a break for it, scattering in all directions. The white line drawn on the intersection in the above picture was mirrored along each of the directions of the intersection, and the winner of each race was the first turtle to make it across any one of the lines, essentially the first turtle out of the intersection.

I joked that I wanted to meet the bookie for the event, as I'm sure there was action on the races. Degenerate gamblers are everywhere.

Some of the badass things about visits to the Farm are the sky-views. At night, on the first few nights we were there with a tiny sliver of a crescent moon that set at 9 pm and no clouds, the Milky Way splashed spectacularly across the night's ceiling. Other days, amidst the oppressive heat and humidity of July panhandle-Texas, you could watch the rain pass over the prairie off in the distance, and ust hope it would get to you soon enough, just to take the edge off the heat.

Eventually it would come. Lightning blinks and thunder rattles your guts, enormous water droplets batter everything for tens of minutes, and in the aftermath the day feels much more tenable.

Every once in a while, someone may sit for a quick selfie:

Before a thunderstorm travels through, sometimes you just need to relax in a converted horse trough/swimming pool:

And on a different day, getting a gin-and-tonic break after hours of construction work, mama-bear rocking the cowboy hat to keep the shade going:

While in Rome, or, eh, Texas...the hat was actually quite comfortable and good at keeping the sun off my eyes:

One day, while Corrie and Peter were working the milk barn-to-bunkhouse conversion project, I took the kids to the same playground that Ron, Corrie's dad, went as a kid and took his own kids to. Across the street from it is a cool abandoned old building that Cass wanted to bust into:

I sent this picture to Ron asking about it. He said it was the original Clarendon College building. I told Cass that when he was older, and could drive himself around, he could come back with his cousins ater hours and break in, as long as it was still standing

Other things about the farm's sky: sunsets:

I could litter any Farm post with pictures of sunsets, as we take dozens each day we make it out to see them. The sun set around 9 while we were there in July, so...yikes. Getting the kids down for bed is tough when it's already past their bedtime and the sun is still up in the sky.

Sometimes, after as much gin as we drank in ten days, the night sky yields plenty of cool views, like the following Sisu or, more accurately Trogdor, dragon w/heart pic:

Ron gave me the secret recipe for his marinade for the meat we smoked, and then he and Pete gave me pointers on how to keep the setup going: hovering the temperature between 200 and 250, while also keeping the smoke pure and heavy:

That's not brisket, which is what Ron typically smokes. This time he bought two big-ass pieces of meat, roughly the same size as briskets, but they were NY Strip steak cuts, like the big piece that you cut NY Strips from. Together the pieces cost just over $330, so...don't eff them up!

Thick, billowing smoke...that's what you're looking for. Also, you'll smell like campfire all day, since it takes many hours to finish such a piece of meat.

We did the fireworks on Sunday the 3rd, since some people had to leave the next day during the day. In north Texas, with the humidity that we experienced, it seemed like anything would go. And it mostly did:

I remember when Sacramento outlawed sparklers, so to see some, and have Cass burn some, was pretty cool. Ron had purchased nearly $300 worth of mortars and showering beauties, and we set them all off in the middle of the main driveway. Seeing a nice firework at a professional display is cool, but when you're directly underneath the thing as it detonates is something else.

I even set some tile during the time. Since we didn't have access to a wet saw, I set the twelve pieces that didn't need to be cut. That was a busy day: smoking a huge strip loin roast, setting tile, keeping a few eyes on the kiddos, and making food for each meal. It was a sweaty, campfire-smell day.

Also, I don't have a whole lot of baby/family pictures. Not ere and not i my phone, really, which is weird. Maybe. Mary and Eddie and their twins were there, as well as his daughter Harper. Peter was there the entire time, while Colton, his boy and the same age as Harper, left early with Carol. Rob and his wife Staey were also there for two evenings; they, like the Mary/Eddie contingent, stayed in a hotel in Clarendon. Pictures exist elsewhere, I suppose. (Also, my phone has been trying to make emergency calls in my pocket for months now, and I regularly left it off-person.)

The drive back we wanted to make leisurely. On day two, after seeing a few of the things we wanted to see, we rolled into Barstow before 7 pm, the sun was high in the sky, the thermometer said 115, and we were just over two hours away. So leisurely took a back seat again.

But, on the first day we stopped at a dinosaur museum in Tucumcari, NM, a few miles west of the Texan border. It was awesome. Based on Mesalands Community College's paleontology department's discoveries, the collection of fossils and gear is world class. When mixed with the MCC's art department's bronze casting division, many of the finds are doubly spectacular.

This is the world's best preserved torvosaurus skeleton, found nearby, and is obviously a relation of Tyrannosaurus rex (it is from earlier and is smaller):

The following display enthralled me:

Two creatures locked in a mortal battle. A theropod and a pteranodon. The detail on each is remarkable, and probably aided by artistic license, but anyway: the theropod is the dinosaur and the pteranodon is the flyer, and the plaque starts with, "Is it a bird?" The irony of the battle is that the birds are avian dinosaurs, and the birds descended from theropods, while the fuzz and feather-covered pteranodon is not what the ancestors of birds are.

That night, we stayed close to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. After breakfast we made it to the eastern entrance to the park. 

I think I may paint the following picture of the "Painted Forest Inn":

With silhouette of Corrie and Camille 

The Painted Forest is the name given to thousands of square miles spread over four states, and the Petrified Forest National Park takes up a square down in the southern tip, like the nucleus of a comet.

There are so many beautiful badlands areas and zones, and the hikes are mostly easy going. We didn't stress doing all of them since we'll be by again in the future, as the drive to the Farm will happen plenty more over the next few years.

The petroglyphs were awesome. From above you can see the pictures that modern humans drew/carved onto the rocks in a specific area, but you have to view them from a sixty feet above:

We went on a hike later on, and it was fantastic:

We even stopped for the "agate bridge":

Maybe at one point you could walk across it, but not at this point. It is being supported by the concrete and rebar, but still, you must stay off.

There was a spot where Rt 66 used to ride directly through the park, and an old rusted out Studebaker marked the original route. At the Roadkill Cafe there had been an old rusted out car, and I felt like now would be a good time to show both:

Seligman, AZ

Petrified Forest NP, AZ

**

I mention in the title that this was an "Alternate Summer." 

What I really meant was that this summer has seemed like a collection of fever dreams as we work through COVID and E. coli, days in the car and no air conditioning. Luckily things have been fixed, at least around here. And since we got back, we've finished Stranger Things 4 and the Obi Wan show (that should have been called "Obi and Leia").

To Texas and back, 2022, yo!