In June, I took my six-year-old son on that oh-so-unavoidable Southern California amusement park trip.

It was great, but after spending several days standing in long lines, sweating, and inhaling our yearly allotment of soft-serve ice cream cones, I was ready for a change of scenery.

As a teacher, I’m always looking for ways to enhance our family vacations with educational experiences, or—as I like to call them—“Geek Stops”. So we headed for the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, the largest and most diverse collection of extinct Ice Age plants and animals in the world.

Fun for the whole family

By far the coolest thing here is Excavation Pit 91. There are fossils sticking out of the bubbling surface of this sticky and stinky working fossil dig. My son loved seeing the woolly mammoth fossils and the tar-blackened boots used by the excavating crew. I just wondered how the workers could bear the smell (big fans, apparently).

For a good cause

The money we spent on our admission tickets can help the Page museum maintain its exhibits or keep Excavation Pit 91 open longer hours. My credit card may not have known the difference, but I felt less guilty shopping at the museum gift shop than I did at Legoland.

They blinded me with science

They have no flashy special effects here. What they do have is a working laboratory set up fish bowl-style. My son walked around it peering in at the workstations where scientists restore Ice Age plant and animal fossils found in the pits. He was particularly fascinated with the cleaning of tiny fossil teeth (which I hope signals an increased interest in his own dental hygiene).

After our visit to the tar pits, we were ready for something else cool and sticky. So we hurried over to Santa Monica pier for more soft-serve cones!

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Need a place to sleep in Southern California?  Take your pick.

July 18th, 2008 | by Carolina 2 comments