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Day 12: Phoenix

After we left White Sands, MN, we headed toward Phoenix, where we saw cool lizards:

Then we went to the home of my coworker, Chris Warren, who used to live in Seattle but now works remotely from Phoenix. He has the nicest dog on Earth!

We left Casa de Warren in the early afternoon and headed toward California. The landscape west of Phoenix is wonderful! We saw tons of dust devils too!

Day 13: Joshua Tree National Park

We woke up in Banning, CA and decided to visit Joshua Tree National Park. We loved it!

I found this pile of bones and scat drying in the desert. I think the bones must be vertebrae, but they’ve been weathered smooth and round by the harsh environment. The scat contained tiny bones!

Then we saw this adorable ground squirrel! I bet the bones belonged to his relatives!

Then there were more Joshua Trees. Blah blah blah.

And a bunch of cholla cactus.

And then we headed to Riverside, CA to hang out with our pals the Marianos!

Day 14: La Brea Tar Pits

So we did some hanging out with the Marianos, some of our dearest friends on Earth. Greg had to work during the day, so Jen and I headed to La Brea Tar Pits in the middle of downtown Los Angeles!

The first pit I saw was this tiny fenced off one! Litter makes me angry!

Here’s a video of me getting angry. This is a different pit with trash in it.

Here’s the biggest tar pit, which you may remember from The Last Action Hero starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s actually a lake / tar pit, thanks to miners in the early 20th century. Thanks, humans!

We had to check out the museum before we finished looking at the tar pits, because we got there 50 minutes before the museum closed. We always do that. Here is a sloth:

I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of it, but there was one display that took up an entire wall that was a grid of 400 dire wolf skulls found in the tar pits. You could clearly see the variation in the skulls, and it was a nice lesson in evolution. I also bought a book about dog evolution, but for some reason it made me feel cool instead of nerdy.

Then we went back outside and looked at more tar pits, including this teenerz one:

And this one that had a pair of boots stuck in it. I guess the guy didn’t die.

And this one was bubbling enthusiastically!

Day 15: Huntington Beach

First we ate lunch at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles, which Leanor recommended to us.

I was under the impression that it was going to be chicken wrapped in waffles. I mean, it was good like it was, but not really the kind of thing I normally eat from restaurants.

But then we went to Huntington Beach to hopefully catch Ray Comfort doing his street preaching thing. I had no plans to engage him, I just wanted to see him “live” and possibly get my picture taken with him. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him say that he preaches at Huntington Beach every Saturday. I watched a video on YouTube and asked the Marianos if they knew where in Huntington Beach he was. This is the one we watched. Note the Subway in the background:

Well, here’s that Subway, but no Ray Comfort:

There was an information booth manned by a lady, so I asked if she was familiar with street performer with a moustache and a New Zealand accent named Ray Comfort. “Is he with a church?” she asked. I said that he was. She told me that he only shows up some of the time, and he hadn’t been there yet that day, but that I was in the right place.

Oh well. We hung out for about an hour, just in case, but he didn’t show up. I did find a booth that had a totally cool fossil mackerel shark tooth, about 30 million years old, and for a good price. I gave that to Greg. He thought it was really cool.

And then over the next two days we drove back to Seattle! That’s the end!

Stumble it!

Posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 in Category Roadtrip 2008. Please comment, ok?