I Remember California
Day 2

The morning session of this day finds us heading out to the La Brea Tar Pits, which is one of those locations that Joe had been looking to see, and I figured I wasn't going to see something like it elsewhere. La Brea would qualify. The thing I wasn't prepped for was the notion that the Tar Pits are not really out somewhere. I was fully prepped for them to be isolated off in some desert area. Shows what I know.
Here we see some of the pictures from the trip.

On our way we find possibly the most offensive billboard ever. Partially hidden there, it reads "Like heaven, we're a gated community."

I am prepared to go.

Those of you who have need for it, this would be a good image to type "PWN3D!" over. (Incidentally, a good way to tick off those people who do that sort of thing is to actually pronounce "pwned" as if it were a Welsh word.)

In conjunction with the previous image, this pair of statues teaches kids that their parents can be taken from them at any time. Thus LA school children can be scarred for life by leaving suspicious black stains outside their parents' bedroom.

This sign really speaks for itself. Of course, upon entering, we couldn't find any birds.

I'd just like to point out the fact that this is a Giant Sloth skeleton, and frankly if they were this size today, we wouldn't be commenting on their speed.

With a little more equipment, a bucket of tar could be the next Bowflex. I was a little wary of this station, I was kind of figuring you'd discover what it's like to be trapped in tar by pulling the lever on the trap door immediately below you.

Here we see the California condor fossil, in its favored "who's the condor?" position.

I botched the first of the two pictures here, but the first is a closeup of a sign for Knight family portraits. The Knight in question is the guy who sketched most of the animals whose fossils were found at the pits. The interesting thing about him is that they basically say he was working from a mix of existing animals and his own imagination. In other words, he made it all up. Now that's reasonable, but one has to question the whole thing when we see his family portraits, and... well, take a look at the lower right. I guess the notion of adopting adorable babies from foreign lands is older than we thought.

Here we see a positively Khmer Rouge style display of dire wolves. Dire wolves appear to have been the ancient California equivalent of Wile E. Coyote, just judging from the number of times these suckers must have fallen in the pit in quest for prey. They're the most common fossil to come out of the pits, and Joe suggested that if there's a paleontologist pecking order, you have to apprentice two years just cleaning up dire wolves.

Fenced off from the rest of us we can see the paleontologist's natural environment. The little fellers were a little shy on the day of our visit.

With this display of animatronics, we can see that Chuck E. Cheese La Brea has taken an edgier approach than most to Pizza Time Theatre.

I've botched the lighting on this, but here you can see the two funny parts of this. Upper right: the history even goes back to the time when molecules roamed the earth. Lower right: Notice how the ancient mammoth immediately evoluted into spacemen.

In 10000 years, scientists will struggle to taxonomically place the traffic cone, probably deciding to put it with foraminifera.

I just love this sign. Just because it's so particular for the area.

Joe suggested the caption for this one: Pictured: Giant Sloth. Also pictured: Statue.

Getting back to Mr. Knight's flights of fancy in drawing the animals, we see this: his take on the old question "What would a bear look like if it wore Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion makeup?"

Judging from it being fenced off, I think the viewpoint of the conservationist won.

Following that we decided to roll down along the coast in hopes of finding a nice beach. The one we found was nice enough, though by being cloudy, cold, and rocky, it probably wasn't what Joe was aiming to show visitors.

From there, we headed east, towards the foothills and through the Cleveland National Forest. On our way to Lake Elsinore. Lake Elsinore has the Storm, which was the closest minor league baseball to our trip.

Pictures from this leg:
Yeah, we happened to drive past San Juan Capistrano. And I do mean drive past, we noticed the gift shop in front of it before we realized it was right there. About a block south, we ended up at a Mexican restaurant and ate an early dinner. I tried out the goat tacos here. Nice enough, and I now know how to handle that goat if he gets off the neighbors' farm again, but I gotta tell you, it's no ostrich.

The Cleveland National Forest is some very fun driving. And there were traffic signs I hope to never see again. Like the arrow doing a complete 360 around a 15MPH speed limit. That should be reserved exclusively for offramps. All we could figure it that it was all for the best. The best way to preserve the Cleveland National Forest was to keep it a safe distance from Cleveland. (Sorry, Pittsburgh humor there.)

Lake Elsinore. Joe noted he's one of the few people to have visited both Lake Elsinore and Elsinore.

Here you can see the Storm logo staring back from the Jumbotron. It was free cap night for the first 1500, but we missed out. Supposedly it's one of the best sellers in the minors, two evil eyes staring out at you. The storm also have TWO mascots, which seems a grand overbudgeting.

Here we see a scene from the next JK Rowling book: Harry Potter and the Soul-Sucking Summer Job.

If you zoom in on this, you can see the PSA for preserving the water table, with the slogan "Only Rain in the Storm Drain." I really want Cypress Hill to do the TV ad.

This ad combination just blew my mind. Perfectly rational, just not a combination I'd ever figure would come up.

I had to take a picture of this, not only because it's amusing, it's positive proof that the money for the second mascot forced them to get a factory seconds ball pit.

On the way back from taking that last picture was the event that colored the whole trip. But before that I stopped off at the clubhouse store to buy a hat. While there, I saw a poster detailing all the current logos of minor league baseball. This I had to have. However, the cashier managed to personify dodgy, by being unable to either: allow me to pay by credit card, pay attention, present a reason why he couldn't roll the poster up, or explain himself. Very odd, very unsatisfying, and I ultimately decided the poster wouldn't survive transport. I then had to get the guy to give me change back.

Having been rendered punchdrunk from that exchange, we headed to concessions. Joe wanted a dog, and I needed something to drink. Just as Joe got his dog, everyone around me heard this terrific crash. A massive thump. I heard something different, two thumps. Then I felt pain. I turned around, wondering who had bumped into me, only to see a kid running away with the ball. I then asked the immortal question as I put my hand to the back of my head: "Was that the ball that hit me?" It appears that it was, I apparently got clipped by part of the ball which then continued on to hit the plexiglass window of the concession stand. Outside of a nice welt, I was okay, except for the fact that I then didn't try to get the Pepsi for free, so obviously some damage had occurred. After that, we had the running joke "If you can dodge a ball, you can dodge a ball. You can't dodge a ball, therefore..."

If I was having any damage, what we next saw at the game was enough to make me think I was hallucinating. After taking our seats, the announcer cheerfully stated at the next inning break "It's the Nut Sack Race!! Brought to you by Corn Nuts!" Fans of Dysfunctional Family Circus just cracked up there. Here we see the nut sack race, in all its glory. They handed us a couple bags of corn nuts as we left the park.

Nothing I can do with this picture, outside of just putting after the last paragraph.

Outside the stadium, there's wireframe sculptures of a pitcher and a hitter. We thought they looked a great deal like Tron.

I promise the rest of the vacation won't nearly take as long to write up.