My friend Dani, who you may remember as the owner of Mina the cat, was making a trip to Los Angeles, so I headed over from Las Vegas to visit her while she was in town. For one of our tourist activities, we visited the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California.

When Dani first told me she wanted to visit the Tar Pits, I was a bit confused as to why she would want to go look at a bunch of asphalt. But, when she ex­plained more about the story behind it, it became a lot more interesting.

Apparently, the tar pits are a naturally-occurring phenomenon that would trap animals in them a long time ago. Small animals would get stuck in there first, then some medium animals that were predators of the small animals would see them in there, think it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get some free food, and also go into the tar pits and get stuck. Then some larger animals that were predators of the medium animals would see them in there, think it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to get some free food, and also go into the tar pits and get stuck. This process would continue until many different animals of many dif­fer­ent sizes ended up getting stuck in the tar.

The tar is still active and was bubbling up while we were there. There were also many cones set up by staff and sparingly spread out across the entire plot of land—this was to warn people about locations where even more tar was randomly coming up where it didn’t used to be, so that visitors wouldn’t end up stepping in it.

There was also an indoor portion of the museum. It was very stereotypical of a regular museum, but one portion of it I liked was the laboratory section where we could watch scientists clean fossils found in the tar pits.

There was also an interactive section where you could test your strength and see whether you would be able to pull yourself out of tar, if you had gotten stuck.

Remember how I said the tar sort of just erupted from random locations throughout the plot of land? When we had wrapped up and was walking back to the spot I had parked, we saw a section that was coned off in the parking lot because tar was coming onto the surface even through the pavement. It made me wonder how damaged the vehicle above the leak was, if there was one parked above it when the tar first came out, as well as how long it would take for the entire parking lot to eventually be covered in cones.

The La Brea Tar Pits are in the same block as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, so if you’re going to either of those two, I think it’s worth a visit just to see something so unique and different in the middle of a city.

If you’re interested in learning more about the fossils, admission to the museum was US$15.00 per person for me, but if you just want to see the tar pits, that is free and open to the public.