Southern California Vacation 2026 - Day 4 - La Brea Tar Pits

Hey I know these vacation recaps are coming slower than they usually do. But I'm going to try to get them finished over the next few days.

Day 4 of our California vacation was Tuesday May 24. We were so tired after our long day at Universal Studios on Monday. Originally I'd thought that our 2 day passes had to be used consecutively. I was so glad when I read the fine print and discovered that the second day could happen up to 90 days after the first. That meant we could have a rest day before going back to the park. 

So Tuesday was our rest day. We slept in and had breakfast without being in a rush. Then we got ready for some light sightseeing. 

Here's Lydia underneath the pretty tree in front of the vacation house. 

We drove from the house in Burbank into the actual Los Angeles area. We were heading to the La Brea Tar Pits. For some reason my phone kept trying to take us down residential streets rather than the bigger roads. So we got to see some pretty amazing houses. 

Eventually I got us to Wilshire Blvd. Derrick was excited about this road. This is the road that the lava flows down in the movie Volcano. Derrick thought it was interesting to see it for real. 

Then we found the parking lot for the La Brea Tar Pits. It looked exactly like it did when Brandon and I came here 17 years ago. 

We parked and then walked around the museum to look at the La Brea Tar Pits. These had changed a bit. The grasses around the big tar pit was much higher. Here's everyone looking at the mammoth statue. 

I went around to take a picture from the little bridge area I remembered from before. But the grass made it so the picture wasn't as clear. You can compare it to the picture on this blog back in 2009. 

Here I am. 

When Brandon and I came here 17 years ago Brandon was still in school and I was the only one working. We didn't want to pay the money for the museum back then. But I'd always kind of regretted that. So this time I paid for us to go to the museum. The kids got in at student rates, and since Veronica is 12 her ticket was even cheaper - but it was still like $75 for all of us to go inside. 

At first I kind of regretted that purchase. The museum was full of kids on a field trip and it felt really chaotic. And the first couple displays I looked at were mammoths. Now mammoths are cool, but we have a FREE Mammoth skeleton in our museum in Idaho. So I was a little like, "Hey we have Mammoth's in Idaho, why are we supposed to be excited about these California Mammoths?"

But after a while the field trips kids were all herded into a movie theatre and things calmed down in the gallery. And I was able to look at other displays. Here's a giant sloth.

Here's the Mammoth.

This is a saber tooth tiger. 

This is a camel - oh and all these skeletons came out of the tar pit area. So that was cool too.

Here's a recreation of a mammoth.

There were also displays about the tar.

Here's the mammoth again.

There were displays about dire wolves.

I really liked this display of 404 dire wolf skulls that all came out of the tar pits. That's pretty cool.

Here's Derrick for scale. 

The middle of the museum was an open air conservatory with lots of cool plants. So we walked around that. 

Here I am again.

Look at those big leaves.

I liked this plant with red flowers. 

Back inside, I liked the displays about how they cleaned the things they found in the tar.

Here's a big saber toothed tiger recreation.

Behind Derrick is a big picture of what this area looked like about a hundred years ago. There were lots of oil derricks all over.

When we were done with the museum we went outside. (And for the record all this outside stuff was free so we didn't have to pay to see this.) We walked around and looked at various sized tar pits. 

It was cool to see little bubbles coming up out of the tar.

There is one pit that is still an excavation site. We were able to look down into it from a viewing area. 

The tar is so creepy looking. 

Here we are looking at another pit. 

There were even tiny little holes in the grass.

We walked over to the Art Museum that is next door. They have a cool display of old street lights. 

The kids humored me and helped me recreate a picture of me from 17 years ago. But this time they were there. It's funny because that 2009 trip was to take my mind of the fact that I couldn't seem to get pregnant. I NEVER would have believed you that I'd have twins in 2010, another baby in 2012, and another in 2013.

Here's the full view of the streetlights. 

These were so cool.

I liked how they had them arranged according to height.

Then we walked back to Hancock park. There was this big rock sculpture thing. 

It's kind of an unsettling piece of art. 

It's just so big!

We went back to our car. On the way there we passed natural asphalt coming up from under the asphalt parking lot. 

We at lunch in a grassy area near the car. Then we drove north to the Griffith observatory. We were really looking forward to seeing the planetarium show there. 

But when we got there we were told the parking lot at the top was full and we were directed to park on the side of the hill and walk up. If we'd been able to get a parking spot right at the turn it might have been okay, but there weren't any available parking spots! We finally passed one at a spot that would have probably been a 20 minute hike back up the hill. We'd just walked all over Universal the day before, none of us were in the mood for a hike!

So we drove back down through Griffith Park. The trees were pretty cool looking. 

Really, at this point I just wanted a nap. And most people in the car were pretty testy with eachother. So we drove back to the house. 

Brandon did some quick grocery shopping. Then he and Charlotte went on their own driving adventure. They went out to the Santa Monica Pier. 

The rest of us had a nice relaxing afternoon. I napped for a while. Then Derrick and I watched some Mr Bean on Youtube. Here are some of us just chilling out in the living room.

Brandon had bought burritos so we had those. I also made chips and salsa. 

One of my favorite memories is of sitting at the little round table with Lydia and Veronica. I had them help me make a list of what rides we'd gone on in what order at Universal on Monday. We had fun reliving the fun memories. (And that list is what helped me write out the post about day 3 in such detail.)

Brandon and Charlotte got home around 8:00. We all hung out talking for a while. We prepped a little for the next day too. We were going back to Universal Studios. We were also going to leave our vacation home so we started gathering our things together. 

Brandon and I went to get gas. He'd looked up where the nearest cheapest gas was. I think it was still $6.50 per gallon. But I might be wrong about that. 

And that was our very simple Day 4. It was a much needed rest day at what was basically the middle point of the vacation.