Carpinteria Bluffs Reserve

Nice walk to Carpinteria Bluff Reserve this week!  There have been fewer harbor seal pups born this year according to the docents at the overlook, who said ~75 have been recorded as compared to the past few years when ~100 were born.  There were several at the site when we visited, though they are now getting fairly big!

Some previous posts from this site are here.

This year we continued our walk along the bluffs beyond the pier, heading west to Tar Pits Park.  There we could see one of the places along the beach where the asphaltum bubbles out forming a mound from the bluff onto the sand.   Looking west we could see a bit trickling out from the rocks down toward the beach, too.

Tar pits park - looking west

Tar "sliding" down the rocks

You may want to read more about Carpinteria's Tar Pits, which are pretty cool!  In our book (Lentz 2013) see pp 57-60.  There is also information about the site on these pages:
from carpinteria.com,   caopenspace.org,  and parks.ca.gov 

From the latter: 

“The Carpinteria Tar Pits once bubbled up near the state beach. Spanish explorers noted that the Chumash caulked their canoes and sealed their cookware with the asphaltum. Around 1915, crews mined the tar, which was used to pave the coast highway in Santa Barbara County. In order to dig the tar, workmen had to heat their shovels in a furnace; the smoking tar would slice like butter with the hot blade. Long ago, the tar pits trapped mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and other prehistoric animals.”