Friday, October 12, 2018

Vacation!

We left to drive to California on Saturday afternoon (October 6th).  We planned on driving straight to Megan's house, but made a pit stop in Quartzsite for coffee and ice cream. 

Once we got to Megan's, Spencer and I went in the backyard for his 11 year 1 month pictures. 

Official
The rest of the evening was spent talking, watching the kids play, eating dinner, and having some delicious drinks.  Then it was an early bedtime because we were all getting up early on Sunday. 

On Sunday morning Megan and her crew left really early to go to the beach. 

I was up early, but had a hard time convincing anyone else to get up with me. 

Elliott, Hadley and Hollis had slept in the living room.  This is how I found Elliott that morning. 


Once we finally got on the road we headed to, well, get coffee first.  Then we headed to LA.  

Our first stop was the La Brea Tar Pits.

From Wikipedia: The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of tar pits around which Hancock Park was formed in urban Los Angeles. Natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, pitch or tar—brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with dust, leaves, or water. Over many centuries, the tar preserved the bones of trapped animals. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. The La Brea Tar Pits are a registered National Natural Landmark.

There is a working lab in the museum where you can watch people working on the fossils. 

Elliott loved the animal displays.

The first thing we did was to take the outdoor tour. 


There are new seeps forming all the time.  Cones let you know where not to step. 


The number of animals excavated from these pits is mind boggling. 

There was a "live" show with a saber tooth cat.  It was really neat. 




The history of the formation of life on earth. 
These are all femurs from the same type of bird.  It really is amazing how many animals they have collected. 

Bones they are still working on cleaning. 


Skulls from wolves. 



We watched the people working in the lab for a while. 



She was looking for microfossils in piles of gravel.  You can see them in the screen above.  It sounds like awful, tedious work. 



A new seep of asphalt. 

I think this is supposed to be a ground sloth. 


After we were done at the tar pits we told the kids we'd go out for ice cream.  I googled the closest location, but did not check the prices first.  Yikes.  I had been planning on letting them get two scoops, but we almost walked out with none after looking at the board. 

Michael got the Aztec Chocolate, Spencer the Strawberry Buttermilk, me the Pumpkin Spice and Elliott the Chocolate Sorbet.  They were all extremely delicious.  Mine tasted like pumpkin pie. 
Then it was on to our main destination.  The Knotts Berry Farm hotel!

We were staying right next to the hallway of special Snoopy rooms that were $50 a night extra. 

Maybe someday we'll stay in them.  The hallway was awfully cute. 




We were headed to dinner at about 6:00 when we met up with the real Snoopy in the lobby.  Elliott was thrilled. 



The view of the hotel from the parking lot. 

It was a five minute walk from the lobby to the entrance of the park. 
We did some shopping in the numerous gift shops while waiting for our table at Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant. 


Then it was dinner time!

Knotts Berry Farm was started as an actual berry farm.  They were famous for their boysenberries, so boysenberries play prominently in all of the food there. 

I had a boysenberry lemon drop. 

Michael had a boysenberry beer. 

They brought us an entire pan of biscuits with butter and boysenberry jam. 

The kids got jello as an appetizer with their meals. 


Rhubarb cherry soup that was not my favorite. 

Yum.  Friend chicken dinner. 

More shopping after dinner. 


My name is always with my brothers names in all the named merchandise. 

Our dinner came with a whole boysenberry pie that we got to-go.  We took it back to the room with four forks. 

We had no knife and no plates, so we just went rogue. 


We were all too full to eat much, but we made some progress. 

Up next: we go to Knotts Berry Farm amusement park and leave with season passes. 

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