It's really windy here in California! Yesterday a sycamore tree blew down across the street from where Erik works! It was so windy this weekend in Los Angeles, I kept bending in half!
Erik and I picked up his friend Oree and drove to the top of Griffith Park, high above the big city, to explore an old observatory from the 1930s. This famous landmark has appeared in many movies including one called "Rebel Without A Cause," directed by a man from Wisconsin!
Oree has lived in LA for almost 50 years! He said it sure has changed! Even he had trouble with the wind, but he held me up for Erik to take a picture of the mountains and city behind us.
You can see all the way to the ocean on sunny days. The city is huge!
That's downtown Los Angeles to the right. Can you see all the buildings? Here's a picture of me by those same skyscrapers just a couple hours earlier, so you can see how tall they are.
Griffith Park Observatory is 10 miles away!
Of course since it was daylight, we couldn't use the telescope to see the stars. But we could explore the museum. Inside, all the planets are represented overhead, and there are giant globes of the earth, moon and sun.
I found out that Southern California is one of the most important places when it comes to studying the night skies. A hundred years ago, there were a lot less people and a lot less lights, so scientists could see through their telescopes really far!
These days California is still important to space exploration. Not only do they make jets for rockets here, but the Space Shuttle lands in the desert! Erik says when he worked in LA, he would sometimes hear the sonic boom of the shuttle coming in for a landing. He said it sounded like two big cannons going off--one boom after another.
This man Professor Albert had some interesting things to say. I sat down beside him while he explained his theories about space and time. I didn't really understand what he was talking about, so I just kept nodding, and then I started nodding off, and then Erik said, "Flat Stanley, wake up!"
I opened my eyes and said, "But I was having a wonderful dream about traveling through space!"
Later, when we were leaving, I noticed you could see more city to the north, and you could also see the Hollywood sign. I posed in front of it, but it was several miles away on a mountainside. I guess we needed a telescope!
How are you doing over there in Wisconsin? Erik says it will be time for me to come home soon. It will be sad to leave California, but I'm sort of homesick, too!
Your friend,
Flat Stanley
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