The Rock

And no, I'm not referring to a certain pro-wrestler-turned-movie-star by the name of Dwayne who plays a gay Samoan bodyguard in his latest outing in a poor sequel to one of the most brilliantly funny movies of the 1990s.

No, I'm talking about the first super prison built by our federal government. The site of one of the (mostly forgotten) Native American protests of the 1970s. The prison that was built to contain the worst of the worst: that is, if you pissed off the feds bad enough to land in a maximum security federal pen, and THEN you further dignified yourself by exasperating your warden there, Alcatraz is the place to which you would be sent.

After winding our way down from Seattle through Oregon and down the coast of northern California on the PCH, we ended up in San Francisco. Now, I've already expressed my displeasure with the denizens of that fine city in some of my earlier posts....but the fact is that there were definitely some good experiences to be had there.

One of those good experiences was at this fine example of our National Park system.

Here is a view of The Rock from Coit Tower (Coit Tower is on mainland SF):



You'll notice that Alcatraz is surrounded by the water of the San Francisco Bay. This sea water maintains a year round chilly 50 degrees F. We learned from our park ranger about the 50/50/50 rule: there is a 50 percent chance that you will survive for 50 minutes in 50 degree water. Thus the nearly perfect escape record of this prison.

This fact, oddly enough, does not stop otherwise perfectly normal San Franciscans from swimming in the Bay on a daily basis...brrrrrr.



On the ferry out to the island, you're treated to some great approach views:





Upon your arrival, you're greeted by this sign, and graffiti thankfully retained by the park service:



Then, you walk up the hill to the entrance:



When you reach the cell block area, there is a large patio area. When you walk to the city side of the island, you see why the Golden Gate Bridge (the superstructure of which is painted red, for the record) is so named:



Then, if you look to the left of the Golden Gate Bridge, you see one of the reasons people fall in love with San Francisco:



Then, as we made our way into the self-guided tour of the cell block, we were made aware of a whole host of reasons to steer clear of entanglements with the law:





Yep. I'm standing inside one of the solitary confinement cells. Creepy.

Here's a shot of some of the other buildings of the compound:



So there ya have it, my tour of Alcatraz.