Besides visiting with family in Whittier and helping my mom with some work projects, my husband and I drove to two spots in Los Angeles during our California trip in July: La Brea Tar Pits and Farmers Market.
I visited both of these spots in the 1950s. I don’t remember much of the tar pits (a school outing), but I have memories of my Girl Scout troop going to the Farmers Market. We went in spring and many of the girls bought baby chicks. I doubt they received a warm welcome from parents when we returned home. I preferred to spend my money on yummy goodies to devour.
La Brea Tar Pits have been excavated since the early 1900s. The remains of animals found in the pits date back millions of years. The pits have mostly dried up with the trapped creatures embedded. There are tar seeps still on the grounds.
A quarry that was excavated in the 1800s is now a “lake” that churns and bubbles with asphalt and methane gas. It gives a good idea of what earlier pits might have been. You can stir some of the goo in the museum which makes you realize how thick and heavy it really is. The staff meticulously sort the remains excavated at the active digging sites, from insect legs to mastodon skulls. You can watch them behind plexiglass in the museum. They use microscopes to distinguish plant parts from insect parts, etc.
The grounds of the tar pits and excavations are free to view; Page Museum has a fee. There is an additional fee to see the movie about the Ice Age. Ice Age fossils dominate the museum display. Ancient camels, bisons, dire wolves, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, mastodons are plentiful both in fossil form and in reproductions.
The Farmers Market in Los Angeles was established in 1934 and has operated continuously in that spot for 80 years, except for a short time in World War II when it housed military offices.
It is a short drive from the La Brea Tar Pits. We ate lunch at DuPar’s restaurant, an enclosed building, but the market itself has stalls with open-air seating for many food establishments. If you park in the designated Farmers Market parking, you can have a restaurant or vendor validate your parking which gives you 2 free hours. If you park in the next-door Grove lots, there will be no free time or reductions even if you utilize the Farmers Market. The Grove is an unenclosed mall of popular companies like Banana Republic, See’s Candy, The Gap, Container Store, etc. built around a classically-inspired movie theater. We walked a short way thru it, but didn’t really shop.
The Grove
Farmers Market stalls
We did enjoy some locally made Bennett’s ice cream after strolling thru the market.
People who live in this part of LA do shop regularly for produce, meats, ethnic or exotic foods and specialty products. It is of course also a tourist attraction and was very busy on a Friday.
Dragon fruit for sale at stall
This outing was enjoyable and gave my sister and her husband a break from their Indiana relatives.
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