Road Trippin' The USA: Central California Coast - Part 5

Our first order of business in San Francisco was to visit Alcatraz.  As my three readers know, my husband and I are on a quest to visit as many National Parks as possible, preferably all of them eventually, but that's a lofty goal.

Alcatraz Island is a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  It is only accessible by boat and is a look at a Federal Penitentiary with an amazing amount of history to go along with it.  Alcatraz Island really has an amazing history, from the military fortress to the isolated prison to occupation of the island for nineteen months by American Indian peoples. It is a National Park rich with remarkable stories.

We had made reservations for the first boat of the morning to take us out to the island.  Apparently there are busy times where they can sell out up to a week in advance.  If you're planning a trip to San Francisco, I recommend that you purchase your tickets for this adventure in advance!  From our experience, I also recommend that you try to take the first tour. 

When the boat docks on Alcatraz, there is a mad scramble to the prison.  While there are lots of things to see and do on Alcatraz Island, the main feature, of course, is the prison.  You tour the cell house on your own with the guidance of a headset that tells you where to go and what to look at.  You can stop the recording if you want to spend more time in one place or take a break.  The tour is excellent and if you are one of the first people there, you can quickly get your headset and get on your way.  Being an early arrival, you'll also have a much better chance for taking unobstructed photographs of the prison without a million people in front of you.  What is really interesting about the audio tour is that you get to hear actual voices and stories from both guards and prisoners so you really get a good idea of what went on in Alcatraz Penitentiary.

In addition to the audio tour, there are also scheduled lectures given by the park rangers.  We stopped in what used to be the mess hall to listen to a story about the Birdman of Alcatraz, which was pretty interesting.

Once you finish the audio tour, you can tour the grounds and take in a couple other audio-visual programs, such a film about the Indian occupation in 1969-'71.  That's quite a story, too!  While we were there we saw a lot of nesting birds and had fun watching the thousands of birds interacting with each other.  There was also an exhibit, which I think might be still ongoing, about Prisoners of Age.  I loved this exhibit which was part photography and part life stories.  It displayed giant photos of current elderly inmates in the prison system who told their stories about how they ended up in prison.  It was really fascinating.  The Prisoners of Age project was completed by Ron Levine and he has actually published a book of these photos and stories.  I plan on buying the book one day, but it's really expensive!

After returning to the dock, we headed to Pier 39 to meet a friend for lunch.  We spent several hours eating at Bubba Gump's (yes, of course I had shrimp!) and then wandering the shops.  We walked around a lot in the waterfront area just looking at everything and then decided we were just beat, so we headed back to our motel to have an evening of rest and relaxing and snuggling and, well it was a nice night.  We wanted to be up bright and early again the next morning for our second day in San Francisco.

~You can read Part 1 of Road Trippin' The USA: Central California Coast here!

~You can read Part 2 of Road Trippin' The USA: Central California Coast here!

~You can read Part 3 of Road Trippin' The USA: Central California Coast here!

~You can read Part 4 of Road Trippin' The USA: Central California Coast here!

Jennifer St.Antoine, Gather Travel Correspondent 

Jennifer's column, Road Trippin' The USA: Central California Coast will be published every other Friday on  Gather Essentials: Travel, opposite Fridays of her Eight Weeks Across America column.  Both columns chronicle her experiences on America's roads, including recommendations and warning for places to see, stay and eat.

You can find all of Jennifer's Road Trippin' the USA articles at www.gather.com/roadtrippintheusa or in Jennifer's Gather Group Road Trippin' the USA.

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