2/10/08 (Sunday): Believe it or not, this is my 195th posting since I first started blogging! And it's going to be a long one, so buckle up.

First the breaking news: we've accepted a position for summer '08 at the Boone KOA in Boone, NC. Here's a link to their site: Boone KOA. We're excited--it's exactly what we've been looking for. It'll be cool in the mountains, we'll be near Blue Ridge Parkway, Grandfather Mountain and a new Nature Conservancy property (Elk Knob). There's lots of hiking, the New River and all the Appalachian culture that we enjoy. So, there should be some good blogs this summer! We'll leave here March 31, which is the date we contracted for, and need to be there by April 25. That'll give us time to visit some of the things we missed on the trip out (the Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, Petrified Forest) and to have a short visit with the Dykes clan in Florida. I hate to leave here--we really love the area and the people we work with. But summers are brutal and very crowded here, so we think it's wise for us to leave while we're still loving it.

Now, on to our adventures over the last two weeks. After I worked 10 days in a row without a break, we took Sunday off and went downtown.





Our first stop (off the Metro) was Hollywood. We admired the Metro station and then walked along Hollywood and Vine checking out the stars.










In the same area is the historic Plantages Theater, which is currently showing the play "Wicked." It's about the witches in The Wizard of Oz." The web site says: "Long before Dorothy drops in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very popular. Wicked follows these two unlikely friends and college roomates grow into very different women: The Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch." I'd have enjoyed seeing the play, but Wiley isn't into that kind of thing, and it's probably expensive. The theater is supposed to be fantastic inside--art deco.

According to Wikipedia.com, the Pantagaes theater "was designed by architect B. Marcus Priteca, it was the last theatre built for the impresario Alexander Pantages. The palatial Art Deco theatre opened on June 4th, 1930, as part of the Pantages Theatre Circuit. It was built mainly for vaudeville and later showed first-run movies . During the Great Depression, it was forced to economize and thereafter operated primarily as a movie theatre, though live entertainment was presented occasionally. Pantages sold the Hollywood landmark in 1932 to Fox West Coast Theaters. In 1949, Howard Hughes acquired the Pantages under his RKO Theatre Circuit and moved his personal offices to the building's second floor. From 1949 through 1959, the theatre hosted the American motion picture industry's annual Academy Award Ceremonies. It continued to be a major venue for Road show movies into the 1970s. From 1965, it was operated by Pacific Theatres. The Pantages closed as a movie theatre in January, 1977, and re-opened the following month with Bubbling Brown Sugar, the first of the many stage productions that have since become its regular fare."

Next stop was the LaBrea Tar Pits and Page Museum.








This was much cooler than I'd expected it to be. There's a big park in downtown L.A. where tar (it's actually asphalt, a form of crude oil) bubbles up out of the ground. The whole area floats on a sea of oil.





Native Americans used the oil in numerous ways, including coating the baskets with it to make them waterproof. As we got near the area, it smelled like they were paving a thousand streets--it actually made my eyes water!










The sticky tar trapped animals. Other animals came to prey on the trapped animals and became trapped themselves. Apparently, it's a misconception that the animals sank into the tar. It only takes an inch or two of tar over a large enough area to trap a big animal. Even today, they find many birds and small animals trapped in the tar. Many of the fossillized remains are on exhibit in the museum.

We were lucky enough to arrive just in time for a tour. We went to excavation pit 91, where you looked through a glass window down into a pit that was about 15 feet deep. There was a catwalk built over the tar (which is not hot, by the way--the bubbles that come up are escaping methane gas). The paleontologists lie on the boards and muck out the fossils. It's absolutely filthy, disgusting looking work. But it was fascinating to realize we were looking at the bones of animals that roamed the area up to 2,000,000 years ago!

After that exciting day off, I went back to work on Sunday. We had a visit from the head of our company, and put together an outdoor lunch. It was fun to get all our new workers together and meet with the man who runs things. As we finished up, one of the rangers spotted five condors circling the campground. You non-birders out there can skip this part, but birders from all over the world come to this part of California hoping for a glimpse, and we had them flying right over our picnic table! They were so close that we could see the number tags on their wings! What a thrill. I happened to have my camera (but not my binocular camera) with me. It's not a great shot, but it's my record of a thrilling moment!

We took our guest on a tour of the campground, and I took this shot from the hill overlooking the campground where the water tower is. Julie mentioned that she'd like to see an overview of the campground, but it's so big that's not possible. This shot encompasses the whole campground, but it's hard to tell because of the trees. The building you see on the left is the bath house. Our RV is on the far right side of this picture, under the trees. We can't see the lake from our camper because it's down the hill.


I worked Sunday through Thursday, but we took off Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. We took a drive up to Frazier Mountain to see the snow. It was shirt-sleeve weather, but the snow was everywhere above 4,000 feet. We had a lovely drive through the mountains.


Wiley and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary on February 7 with dinner at The Elephant bar, an African themed restaurant. We had a great meal and the atmosphere was quite nice.








Our anniversary present to each other was a trip to the Channel Islands. I think this blog has gotten long enough, though, so I'll blog about that another time. Talk to you again soon!