It's off to Santa Rosa!

On the Saturday after his arrival, Flat Stanley went with Bob and April and their friends Zuzana and Nathan to visit Nathan's grandmother in Santa Rosa, CA. But before they got on the road, they stopped at their favorite neighborhood coffee shop, Brainwash Cafe, where you can order breakfast, lunch, or dinner and then eat it while you do your laundry in the sparkling washers and dryers in the back room. It's a pretty goofy place, but they make great poppyseed muffins and hot chocolate. And that's just want everyone wants before they take a long road trip.  The hostess was really nice. When she heard about Flat Stanley's trip out to California, she wanted to have her picture taken with him. Flat Stanley didn't mind.

After everyone got their tall cups of cocoa and their muffins, they piled back into the car, and put Flat Stanley on the dashboard so he could take in the view. Then they started driving across San Francisco. They went up the steep hills and down the other sides of them, then out along the bay, until they saw the orange-red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. Before they got to the bridge, they stopped at the scenic view and visitor center, so they could show Flat Stanley the bridge. 

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge that goes over the Golden Gate, which is the opening from which sea water flows out from the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. Before the Golden Gate Bridge was finished in 1937, people took ferry boats across the bay. Flat Stanley learned that the chief engineer of the Golden Gate bridge was a man named Joseph Strauss, and that one principal design engineer was a man named Charles Alton Ellis, who was also a Greek scholar. Flat Stanley learned that each main suspension cable is more than 3 feet thick, and composed of 27,572 separate wires. The bridge is 8,971 feet long, and 746 feet high! 

After they were through gazing at the bridge and the bay, they all got back in the car and drove up to Santa Rosa. There, they visited with Dorothy, took her out to lunch at her favorite restaurant, and spoiled her because it was her 89th birthday. Dorothy thought Flat Stanley was cute, and this made him feel quite shy. After lunch, Dorothy was tired and wanted to go take a nap, so they drove her back home, tucked her in, and then made the drive back through Santa Rosa, back across the Golden Gate Bridge, and home. It was time to pack for their trip to Disneyland!