Philip Fibiger

My family’s been visiting, and it has been a week of natural and man-made wonders. I spent friday at Disneyland with Emily, my parents, and my aunt and uncle. It was awesome (and a bit surprising) that when asked if he had any suggestions on what to do on Friday, my uncle suggested Disneyland. It’s pretty similar to Disneyworld, I recognized most of the rides, although the last time i’d been there it had been viewed through the eyes of a six year old. So when my uncle asked me how long Space Mountain lasts, I replied “I think about 10 minutes.” Of course, it was over in about one.

On saturday we went to the La Brea tar pits. The statues outside in the lake were lame, but the museum was cool, and the sites where it was just tar bubbling up from the ground were amazing. There was a tree in the park that was sitting on a pool of tar, and it had sucked the tar up through the roots. There were places four or five feet up the trunk where the fresh tar was oozing out of the bark of the tree, and it had adapted. The fact that this tree was still living just blew my mind.

Sunday we went for a hike in Leo Carillo state park in Malibu. Passing hikers said ’some people we ran into said they saw two rattlesnakes, but we didn’t see any.’ Of course about 400 yards down the trail, There was a rattlesnake sunning itself in the middle of the trail. We made enough noise that it eventually slithered off into the bushes, but it certainly took it’s own sweet time. It was tense for a few moments, but never really frightening. I had my camera in my pocket, and never thought to take a picture. We saw another, larger snake (probably a rattlesnake, but it was further away and I couldn’t tell for sure) crossing the trail on the way back.

Oh, I collected a bunch of tadpoles and i’m going to try to grow some frogs.