Welcome to the Rock!

Our Alcatraz tour was planned for a 1:45p.m. departure which would make our arrival on the rock about 10 minutes later. We had spent the morning lounging around and reconnecting to the virtual world before heading down to the pier to catch our ferry. Much to our surprise, we had learned the day before that only 1 ferry service actually takes you onto Alcatraz island. All of the other tour trips and boat rides only circle Alcatraz and don't allow you to stop there at all. When we had called the company on Friday we discovered that the next available ferry wasn't until Monday, today, which worked out perfect for our weekend plans. When we got to the pier we were herded like cattle into a line along with the other 250 people that were on our ferry to the island. We waited in line being forced to take a photo in front of a picture of Alcatraz which was later available for us to by at the low low price of $22 a pop... yea right! While we were boarding the boat, Kyle began to text me saying that he could see us. Katie and I were both a little creeped out and didn't know what to make of this. Apparently Kyle was working at a home right near Coit Tower that looked out

onto the bay and he could see our boat as we headed to the island. We boarded the boat and headed straight to the roof to wave farewell to Kyle as we sailed toward the foreboding island that lay in front of us. Once we got to the island we were greeted by a mandatory speech delivered by a park ranger. Amidst the rules and many warnings regarding our behavior on the island we did receive a bit of useful information. We found out that the last ranger program of the day was about to start in 25 minutes and it was one that focused on escapes from Alcatraz. To waste the time before our ranger program started, we first watched a video about the history of Alcatraz, then perused the exhibit displays as well as the gift shop. The ranger program turned out to be a walk to the top of the hill finally ending at the cell house but making stops along the way for the ranger to unfold the story of the first prison escape attempt from Alcatraz. The story, though interesting, was quite long and the only pertained to the first escape attempt not mentioning the more famous and elaborate attempts. Personally, I would have preferred a little more variety in the story, but when its a free ranger program, you really don't have much

to complain about. After the story had ended we joined the queue for the self guided audio tour of the cell house. We entered through the showers, headed up the stairs and were greeted by an impressive view of the cell house before us. The tour led us up

and down the 4 blocks of cells, out into the courtyard, and through solitary confinement where Katie and I both stepped behind bars, thankfully for the first time. The route proceeded to lead us throughout the prison, highlighting the locations of various breakout attempts, cells, and battle sights; it was extremely fun and informative. One of the coolest things was to see where the floor had been permanently scarred by grenades during the so-called battle of Alcatraz. At one point a ranger made his way to the second floor and began to open and shut the cell doors. It was an intense moment to experience the silence that came over the crowd as we watched him repeatedly open and shut the cell doors; the loud mechanics creaking and clicking finally ending with the bone chilling BOOM that surely would dampen the spirits of anyone, had they been behind those bars. We both really enjoyed the tour and were grateful that it wasn't mid July during the height of tourist

season forcing us to shuffle through the prison like sardines. We had 40 minutes before the next ferry left after our tour finished, so we spent the time walking around the rest of the island, taking a nature trail which is brimming with birds during the spring and summer but was rather desolate and barren as we walked through in mid fall. Back on the mainland, Katie and I were starving; we hadn't eaten all day since there is no food on Alcatraz island. After deciding on Thai food, we hopped in CJ and headed over to Haight Street. Katie and I hand only briefly glimpsed the neighborhood during our first visit to the city and we were both looking forward to getting a closer look. We drove down Haight looking at all of the shops and people but mostly keeping our eyes peeled for anything with the word "Thai" in it. The fruit of our labors was Best of Thai, a small little restaurant that had the cooks cooking right out in the dinning area. It was a really fun atmosphere and the food easily met our expectations. Once dinner was safely in our bellies we walked down Haight again, this time more aware of our surroundings, stopping occasionally to gaze into the storefronts and politely refuse the beggars asking for change. We arrived back home at the HHH around 7p.m. and

immediately began to prepare things for pumpkin carving. We cleared the table and got the spoons and knives ready then proceeded to sit and think about what we would all be carving. Katie was the only one who knew what she was doing before sitting down at the table; a grateful dead bear! Angella and I sat and pondered our designs for a while before our respective muses came to us. I decided to go with a standard jack-o-lantern face and Angella chose to draw up a complicated spider design. We proceeded to saw off the top and de-gut the pumpkins getting our hands full of gewy pumpkin innards. Once the actual carving began it we were all done in no

time at all. We put candles in our pumpkins, shut off the lights,

and gave Kyle the honor of being the first to witness the greatness which was our pumpkins. Pumpkins successfully carved, we moved on to the seeds. We had a ridiculously large amount of seeds and we decided to each take a batch and make our own blend of seasoning. We all got really creative with our mixes and each batch we made was completely unique and different from the others. Angella did a spicy mix while Katie did a sweet and sugary one. I did a sort of combo of the two, first mixing up sauces and lime juice with pepper and seasoning, but then sprinkling sugar over the top. This created an excellent

combination which gave you a sugary sweet taste up front but ended with a strong spice that only "Z" can produce. During the baking however, I got distracted and ended up burning half of

my batch thus cheating the world out of some of the best pumpkin seeds ever made. The left overs we just covered in plain salt, rounding out our experimental phase with a classic original. Once everything was cleaned up and we had eaten our fill of pumpkin seeds for the night, Katie and I grabbed up the three pumpkins and placed them outside on the staircase leading up to Angella's porch which is where they happily reside today. Tuckered out, we headed to bed for the night, Yosemite next on our list.