Thanksgiving Travels: Day 4 - Alcatraz!

 We left our car Tuesday morning and Bob gave us a quick rundown of the transportation system before he put us on the train and headed off for school.  We road the train for a short distance and disembarked in an underground terminal.  To get up to street level, we road an escalator!  It was a REALLY BIG DEAL for the boys, having never seen one before.  If we had more time, I'm sure we could have made a spectacle of ourselves going up and down the moving stairs just for the fun of it!

Above ground, we found ourselves feeling very small again.   Like little ants among the giant towers of the financial district.  We boarded a bus, and continued our journey out to Fisherman's Wharf.

The kids were thrilled with the buses and trains.  The main reason being FREEDOM!  No car seats, no seat belts.  When they realized it was okay to stand up, they wanted nothing to do with the seats.

And here we are, preparing to board the boat to Alcatraz.  Monte looks grumpy, but really he's just waking from a short nap in the sling.  Once he was fully awake, he was a real trooper for the next few hours.

I have to say, I was a little apprehensive about this tour.  I knew it would be interesting, but would it be too unsettling?  Would it give the kids nightmares?  Would it give ME nightmares?!  I had much consolation in knowing that the tour was self guided and one could abort at anytime and take the next boat back to town.

A couple of real tourists.  Tyler had our old camera and thoroughly enjoyed photographing the water.  Above his head you can see Alcatraz approaching.  The large building on the top of the island is called The Cell House.  That is ware the inmates were kept.  That is where the main tour takes place.

After a quick snack, we climbed the hill and entered The Cell House on the ground level.  We were each handed a pair of headphones with a little player that hung around our necks.  We climbed a set of stairs, walked to the first row of cells, pushed play, and the audio tour began.  We were introduced to some of the guards and inmates whose voices would narrate the tour as we studied their photographs on the wall.  And then we walked from station to station, listening to the stories, the actual sounds of the cell house when it was occupied.  The low murmur of voices, the occasional clanking of a tin cup against the iron bars, the clanking of an entire row of cell doors as they were simultaneously closed by one lever at the end of the row.  And the eerie drone of the men's voices as they told of their experience on The Rock.

I'm not going to tell you what they said.  It is a long and interesting narrative which will either bore you or ruin it for you if you ever want to visit the island yourself.  As for my feelings as we loosed from the docks and drifted away, I was a little keyed up.  Feelings of grief, disgust, and relief flooded in, but mostly an immense thankfulness for a way out.  Not a way out of Alcatraz.  But a way out of sin and immorality.  A way out of the darkness and evilness of this world.  A way up.  A way to love and light and life!

We did not have nightmares, but that night I laid awake thinking about Alcatraz for quite awhile.