What trip to San Francisco would be complete without a visit to Alcatraz Island? Definitely a place to bring the kids, and not only as a not-so-gentle reminder to stay in school, but because it was pretty cool. And a little educational too.
We had a great tour guide who was dressed in Civil War garb, complete with a replica musket rifle. We learned that Alcatraz Island was originally named La Isla de Los Alcatraces (Island of the Sea Birds) by a Spaniard in 1775. Our guide had some interesting stories about life on the island when it was a military fort and prison, as well as the infamous federal prison. During the military era, the soldier’s wives wished to beautify the island and had some military prisoners bring soil from nearby Angel Island in order to plant gardens on Alcatraz. Originally, there had been no soil there, just rock.
Rachel was particularly intrigued by the great escape of 1962. As re-told by her: Four inmates devised an elaborate escape plan and spent almost a year using spoons to chip away the concrete around the air vents in each of their cells to create escape tunnels. The night of the great escape, they used some of the crumbled concrete, soap, and stolen hair from the barbershop to fabricate fake heads to hide under their covers to fool the guard doing nightly headcount. They used an idea from a mechanic magazine to make a boat and lifejackets by using raincoats. One of the inmates was unable to tunnel out the last remaining few feet because an iron pipe was in his way. His co-conspirators looked at each other, and took off without him. No one knows what really happened, all of this information came from this 4th man. The boat was found, as were the three lifejackets that the escapees used, but to this day, the inmates have never been seen or heard from again…
After serving our time at Alcatraz, we decided to hoof it up to Coit Tower. And do I mean hoof. It was A LOT of steps. Like 400 something, we lost count. It was cool to walk the steps rather than drive on the road, because we got to see some houses that are only accessible by the steps. I guess those people don’t move very often. Certainly, no one plays the piano.
FindTheFords 