Fullerton, CA

It'll be interesting to see what a map of my path looks like when I'm done with my travels. I'm now at my parents' place in Fullerton, California. I really wasn't anticipating coming back here for a long time, but then I really wasn't anticipating buying a whale skeleton when I set out either. I made the purchase and there wasn't any more room in the van for me to sleep, so I went back north to Vegas, loaded up the van with as much of my stuff as I could and drove down to Orange county last night. Now my stuff is stored in my parents' atic and they've offered to feed and shelter me for a few days.
I e-mailed a photo to Dr. Barnes at the LA coutny Museum of Natural History to see if the skeleton might be significant, he told me that it was likely herpetocetine cetotheriid, which would make it special and rare and therefor worth aquaring for a museum. Unfortunatley the LA county museum has a policy agains purchasing fossils and so he recommended that I talk the dealer into donating it or buying it myself then donating it. There was no way the dealer was going to donate it for the tax write off since it and many other of his fossils were likely illegally collected. In the end I got the guy to knock $100 off his asking price and drove away with the whale for $400. I however do not make enough money to donate this fossil for tax purposes. Therefore, this whale, from the San Diego area is now the first large specimen in the Genlaw Museum of Natural History, a not yet accredited institution.
I'll be here in southern California for a few days; at least until I can sell some of the trilobites and ammonites I bought and take care of a snafu with my grad school applications. After that, it's on to Tucson, the Petrified forest and points east from there.