La Brea Tar Pits

The La Brea Tar Pits are a unique and cost-free location to take a date, regardless of your opinion on whether they are an archaeological marvel or merely an oddity of nature. You can observe asphalt seeping and bubbling up from the earth's crevices, as it has done for more than 65 million years, and you can observe an archaeology team at work unearthing fossils. If you're fortunate, they'll find a wooly mammoth's remains while you're there, as they did in 2006. Then, get dinner at one of the renowned food trucks that line Wilshire Boulevard, including El Chato Taco Truck, whose burritos, quesadillas, and tacos have won numerous awards.

The statistics are astounding, and the tar pits have produced one of the world's largest collections of Ice Age fossils. There are about 600 different species, ranging from sloths and mountain lions to snakes and mollusks. Nearly 90% of the mammals at La Brea are carnivorous. Surprisingly, the holes have produced more than 200,000 distinct dire wolf animals. The typical idea is that large herbivores like mammoths would have appeared to be an easy meal to predators when they became caught in the asphalt, leading those predators to become stuck in the tar themselves.

Location: 5801 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036, U.S.