Hot, Hot Le Brea Tar Pits

A long time ago, when I was a young girl, my parents took me to the Le Brea Tar Pits during a family trip to L.A.

I have no idea how old I was, elementary aged for sure. Yet the museum made an impression on me.

Saber tooth tigers stuck forever in bubbling pools of hot tar? How could that not make an impression on a kid?

I'm all grown up now, nevertheless, the Le Brea Tar Pits was at the top of my list when it came to "Things I Wanted to do in L.A." I guess I wanted to know if my memories of the place held true.

Turns out that bubbling pools of hot tar still impress me. Even before we reached the door of the museum, we'd run across several places where tar was simply seeping up out of the ground.

And perhaps equally impressive is that the Le Brea Tar Pits are not on the outskirts of the city. They are in the middle of L.A.! Right on Wilshire Boulevard!

Imagine that! Underground pools of liquid tar are swimming just under the surface of our country's second largest city!

And while Ice-Age animals are no longer wandering astray and getting themselves all tangled up in goo, the museum showcases plenty examples of animals that did perish at the hands of tar.

Like this creature. It's a "Harlan's Ground Sloth." The animal is extinct, but 76 skeletons of the species have been excavated from the tar pits at Le Brea.

Even though there were displays of extinct deer, wolves, mammoths, and saber tooth cats (not tigers, cats is the correct name I learned), it was the remains of this goofy looking half bear-half sloth that most fascinated me.

It reminded me of a similar extinct animal my hubby and I had run across in way southern, southern Chile - the mylodon.

And no wonder the tar pits were especially bubbling during my visit. In the afternoon, we spotted a bank sign boasting a temperature reading of 107!

The news later reported Saturday's high at 96. No matter. It was still hot enough to boil tar.