The La Brea Tar Pits and Griffith Park

A few weeks ago, some foreign friends from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) were visiting LA. Another GDC friend, Jeff, acted as tour guide and showed us around. We visited many places, including Venice Beach and Mann's Chinese Theater. However, I took pictures of only the La Brea Tar Pits and Griffith Park.

From left to right, here are Robert (from Sweden), Irene (from Norway), and Jeff. I had always wanted to visit the La Brea Tar Pits, so I'm glad Jeff took us. There are two main parts: the museum and the tar pits. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit the latter.

Another view of the elephant/mammoth skeleton. I had always thought that the tar pits were full of dinosaur bones, but actually the tar pits are too recent for that. (The tar pits date back maybe 100,000 years, but the dinosaurs date back millions of years?)

The La Brea Tar Pits also has a volunteer program in which you can learn to dig out and clean up the fossils. It's a tempting opportunity!

In the evening, we headed up to Griffith Park. The park is up in the hills around LA, so there's a spectacular view of the city. There is also an observatory, but it was closed that evening.

From LA w/Jeff, Irene & Robert

Grad school took me six years, but I never went to Griffith Park in all that time. I'm glad I got to see it.

Perhaps someday I'll do some other LA things: the Getty museum and Mount Wilson.

Trip to Berkeley with Helen and Bibi

In March, I was in the Bay Area for the Game Developers Conference. I also got to see my Auntie Helen and cousin Bibi. We took a day trip to UC Berkeley, aka Cal, my alma mater.

At Cal, one of the biology buildings houses the Museum of Paleontology. They have a life-size T-rex skeleton! Her name is Sue. Bibi's in the lower-left.



GRAW-AUR!








There are a lot of hills in Berkeley! Here, we took a snack break in front of the campus bell tower, which is called the Campinile.








Bibi borrowed my camera and took this picture of a squirrel. I'm still not sure what the squirrel was doing, like whether he was resting, or about to zoom off somewhere.


This is one of the bells of the Campinile. Thankfully we didn't have to climb very far; they have an elevator.

The bells ring automatically on the hour, without warning. They are LOUD.

The Campinile offers great 360° views: the Big "C" in the hills, the football stadium, the Bay, Golden Gate Bridge, etc. The funny-looking building in the middle is the art museum. Below that are some tennis courts, where I once took a tennis class. You can also see a swimming pool; in the surrounding building, I once took a tap class. And in the field below that, we used to play ultimate frisbee.

From Cal w/Helen & Bibi

Bibi did some quick tree-climbing on campus.

We also visited the campus bookstore and a food court on the south side of campus. (We had Korean BBQ.) Then we took the BART back home. Even though it's a short BART ride from Auntie Helen's home to Cal, it sounded like they hadn't been there in years.

I'm glad we went.