Vacation, Part 4

Tired of our vacation yet? You should be. It’s wearing me out just talking about it. Maybe because when I got ready to post this blog, my computer wigged out and lost everything and I had to start over. I'm sure I was much more colorful with my stories the first time around. But it's late and I'm tired.

Also, Husband informed me that all the info about the pictures for all my photo posts should've been under the pictures instead of over them. Nice time to let me know that little piece of information. I can honestly tell you I had considered doing it the other way but it seems that the consensus in the bloggy world is that pictures go under their captions. And I was not about to go back and change them all. So we'll pretend that whole blog thing is true and not just a figment of my imagination made up for my own benefit.

Now, back to the vacation.

We were surprised by the weather in San Francisco. It was very cool and pretty foggy. Not a fog like we’re used too, either. A thick, pea-soup fog that you can see rolling in and envelops you in a damp, cool, quieted darkness. It wasn’t creepy or anything, just…weird. But cool.

This is “Rice-A-Roni Hill”.And this was about as much of the Golden Gate Bridge as we saw. Stunning, isn’t it? We made it to Sausalito, where it was warm(er) and sunny. The Golden Gate Bridge spans across that water to the left. It’s there, I promise. This is where the Golden Gate Bridge is. If you look closely, you can see one of the support beams in the center of the photo, right between the water & cloud/fog. And here we are back in “sunny” San Francisco in line to go over to Alcatraz Island. Our first view of “The Rock.”This is one of the guard houses on the way up to the Prison. This illustrates perfectly how harsh the landscape is on the island. It’s there, then it’s not! The guards and all employees of the prison lived on the island along with their families. This was their school. The water tower. All of their water and supplies had/have to be shipped in because the island has no natural resources. One of the reasons they closed it was because it was too expensive to maintain. One of the out buildings with a furnace. They had a morgue there too, but I never could get close to it. There were people crowded around it the entire time we were there. I probably missed something awesome. This is the dispensary, where everyone got their stuff. And this is where Al Capone supposedly washed everyone’s unmentionables. Remember in the movie, The Rock when the Marines (along with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage’s characters) come up through the floor drains into the shower room? This is it. And the sign on the post in the shower room. Really? Is that even necessary? Looking up at the three levels of cells. Solitary Confinement. The rules stated that the lights were to stay on when the outer door was closed. But apparently those rules were not always followed, leaving the prisoners in pitch black. One man said that to keep his sanity, he’d pop a button of his shirt and drop it. Then he’d spend the next several hours trying to locate it. I think that would drive me insane, not keep me sane! Here’s Husband in Solitary. What you can’t see is that there are about 40 other people who also want to step into this cell (for some unknown reason) to take a photo. The reason the line was so long? Two women tried to become professional photographers when a stranger asked them to take a picture. See? It never turns out well.At some point, the prisoners actually rioted and took over the prison for about four days. The Marines were sent in (see a pattern here?), and here’s where one of their grenades left its marks on the floor. This was the Warden’s house. He had a 13-room “mansion.” The lighthouse. Yes, the lighthouse. One last look at Alcatraz as we were leaving. Late afternoon/early evening in San Francisco. The fog was rolling back in.The San Francisco Bay Bridge, as we were leaving San Francisco. We tried to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but were unable too in the fog, even with all the lights on.

So that’s it. The last day of our vacation was spent traveling home, and as interesting as LAX and DFW were, there are no pictures. You wouldn’t want to see them if there were. I do have a few more stories to tell though, but I’ll give you a break from the vacation for a while.