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To read about our October 2021 Texas Lighthouse Tour, go here.

To read about our July 2021 Independence Day celebration, go here.

November 2021: California Lighthouse Tour - Part 3

Saturday October 30: Point Sur

We get up at 7 with the goal of leaving the hotel at 9. The breakfast in the little streetside nook is ridiculous: cold stuff for help-yourself, muffins, yogurt, and shrink-wrapped breakfast sandwiches. There are microwave ovens in the little kitchen area, but none in our room. It remains foggy this morning, even after we don't leave until 9:20 or so. I'm stuck behind pokey people getting out of town. Plus, I take a wrong turn on Ocean and get to the beach; I should have known, since the hotel clerk, reciting the wonders of Carmel, was clear about the descent to the beach.

All the Californians are parked along Highway 1 this Saturday morning. Again, I'm stuck behind a pokey car out for a leisurely Saturday morming drive. In some places there are foggy patches, and I can hardly see the road. I'm sweating the clock. Finally we get to 19 miles south of Rio Road where the intersection should be. As we pass it, I notice that there's a gate in the fence with a man wearing a reflective vest. I'm sure that's it, and I have to make a three-point reverse on the highway in a fortunate lull in traffic. Yes, this is it, it's still open, and we are apparently the last ones in (I think he minds the gate for another 10 minutes). I am directed to park the car at the foot of the huge rock.

There are about 30 tour members. The guides put us in two troupes, and we start climbing the steep road around and up the hill. Every few minutes our guide, Paul, stops and tells us things. The big rock is composite, not volcanic, scraped off the Pacific tectonic plate as it slides under the North American plate (with the usual hundreds of thousands of years). Juan Cabrillo was the first European to report the location of the rock. In 1848, the lighthouse was built with no road, only a terrible long run of stairs. Later, an inclined railway with cable cars was installed. After 1900 or 1910 a road was finally put in; some of the road markers are more than 100 years old (and fragile). The school was down in the valley, and the teacher lived at the light station. Personal belongings, included a piano, were unloaded from tender ships and hoisted up the rock.

Paul is also a guide at the formerly-secret Navy base next door, and he keeps dropping hints about his other job: The hydrophones at the facility could identify particular Soviet submarines based on the sound of their machinery. When the spy Walker told the Soviets about this, then all the subs started sounding the same. This sophisticated technology for sound processing was developed way back in the 70s, before digital signal processing went mainstream (which means all that processing was analog). Most impressive. At another time, I might have liked to take that tour
www.pointsur.org/ (only Saturdays)

One time, the Coast Guard had to replace a generator at the light station. They calculated the weight of the new generator going in to ensure a 1890s-era wooden bridge could bear the load. However, they failed to account for the weight of the robust 1940-era generator being taken out. The truck went through the bridge. The driver and the equipment were fortunate to not tumble down the almost vertical cliff face into the rocks below. As it is, we can look down and see splinters of planks far below.

On the way up we pass a stone structure that Paul says is the Oil House. It's just closed up, because the Coast Guard determined it would be less of an invironmental impact to just leave it alone than try to remove the contents. Seems to me that's just kicking the can down the road.

Tour Approaches Point Sur Lighthouse Then we turn the corner, and there it is: Point Sur Lighthouse, looming in the fog.

Point Sur Lighthouse The other group got there first and is exploring the tower. We will start in the Fog Signal Room below, which is now a museum. The construction is very impressive, not just brick, but stone. Paul said the stones were quarried elsewhere and brought here. More heavy stuff to sway up the side of the rock.

Jerri at Point Sur Jerri's official photo at Point Sur. Now it's our turn to go up in the tower.

Sun Diffusors We've seen this before: Prism light diffusors to transmit sunlight and illuminate the machinery room.

The 1940s-era aero beacon is still in place in the tower.

Lantern Room View up at the outside of the lens chamber. We can't go up in the chamber (not much to stand on, per the previous photo) but we can be out here on the landing.

Modern Beacon at Point Sur And see the modern high-intensity LED beacon that the Coast Guard uses now. Which is why the aero beacon is just a non-functional for-show piece.

Jerri Descends Stairs Jerri carefully descends the stairs. Paul explains how the West Coast lighthouses were sort of an IKEA thing, with a lot of stuff like the spiral staircase prefabricated, and assembled on site "by the numbers".

Original Point Sur Lens In the Fog Signal Rooom are some a photo of the lens. Paul explains that the actual first-order lens is not here anymore, as when it was still up in the lens chamber, people were shooting at it from the road. So they took it down and displayed it at the Monterey Maritime Museum. Since that museum has now closed down, the lens is in storage by the Coast Guard. There are plans to bring it back, but the site has to be reinforced against earthquakes (and hopefully bullet-proof glass panels put up in the lens chamber).

Macon Crash Headlines The Big Story for Point Sur was the crash of the USS Macon, a captured WWI Zeppelin. Not "crash", exactly, but it sort of came apart in the air, then lost its trim, then sank down to the sea. Naval vessels accompanying the dirigible rescued all but two of the seamen on the craft. This all happened as the lighthouse keeper watched (who then had to render testimony at the Naval Inquest).

David under Macon Impressive model of the Macon hanging in the Fog Signal Room.

USS Macon Model Closer look at the pride of Point Sur Light Station.

Sparrowhawk Detail The Macon had been outfitted with a trapeze arrangement to launch and recover little Sparrowhawk reconnaisance biplanes. Sort of an airborne aircraft carrier. Of course, this brought to memory the Hindenberg scene in the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie. It wasn't all fake!

Lighthouse from Top For some reason, the lighthouse is on a shelf on the side of the rock rather than at the summit. A stair goes up to the inhabited part. Jerri is now higher than the lighthouse.

Coastal Fog at Point Sur The fog is rather patchy, and when a clear spot blows by, we can look down at the beach around the rock.

Point Sur Keepers Compound The blacksmith and carpenter shop used to keep the lighthouse running, including fabricating broken parts as best they could.

Rocks Below Point Sur An idea of how steep the sides of the rock really are. Far below are the perils to navigation the light station was built to warn against.

Point Sur Living Room Against usual convention, the Point Sur Preservation Society has modelled the domiciles in the 1950s style rather than the usual 19th Century style. There's a record player on a coffee table, and an Electrolux canister vacuum cleaner by the closet door. The station was inhabited until the mid '70s, and it wasn't so much the Coast Guard that shut it down as the Clean Water Act. Not sure exactly what the problem was. The original source of water was brackish from the coastal plain below, so at some point the Service constructed a water tank way over on the hills east of the rock, way up, and gravity-fed the water through the plumbing. The navy base to the south had their own tanks for a reliable water supply. The two facilities were almost entirely independent; the only thing they shared was the cable for the television. At any rate, the resulting water pressure was high enough that the toilets had to be on the upper storeys to work properly.

Point Sur Kitchen 1950s era kitchen, appliances, and lovely yellow breakfast furniture. The keeper's quarters was originally shared with the "donkey" engine that ran the inclined rail cable. The head keeper kept requisitioning another habitation, and kept getting rejected by the service, so he took it on himself to relocate the engine outside and converted the rest of the building into a usable house, which includes a mail-order Sears Roebuck staircase.

Point Sur Stove Period stove and oven. To the left of the stove is a refrigerator which has been restored to working condition but it is used only as a display piece. Out on the service porch is a washing machine with a built-in wringer, exactly as I remember my grandmother having on the back porch (and we kids would put our hands through the wringer).

Point Sur Boys Bedroom The boys' bedroom has a nifty ranch-style bedspread (I have the vaguest memories of such a bedspread myself), "Flash Gordon" posters on the wall, and an actual child-unfriendly (by contemporary standard) Erector Set. To entertain the young men. When they weren't outside endangering themselves on the edge of the rock. Being in the Lighthouse Service must have been a nightmare for young mothers.

Paul says there are some psychic manifestations including something that doesn't like things to be out of place - he tells the story of setting up an event, and drinking staws were left scattered on the table, and when they came back, they found the straws all lined up. On a tour many years ago, a child wandered off, and when found, told the adults about a man in a blue coat and blue cap (just like a lighthouse keeper). There are reports of a voice saying "help me" - even though there are no record of sudden or violent deaths, maybe a cholera victim, and there's speculation about a marital infidelity.

The gift shop has two displays, one of Macon (a recovered duraluminum girder section, underwater photos of the remains of Sparrowhawk airplanes in nearby waters), and one of activities at the lighthouse during WWII (watching for Japapnese) and the Cold War. The tour starts the descent down the hill. This is hard going for Jerri, but we eventually get to the bottom, use the porta-john, and are not quite the last ones off the property. As we return toward Carmel on Highway 1, we stop to take a last look at Point Sur rising above the tide of fog.

Point Sur Above Fog

I decide it is prudent to get gas at Monterey, even though we practically have to go all the way downtown before finding a Chevron, Then we try to find a lunch place in one of the communities between Monterey and Santa Cruz. A sign at an exit indicated "food", but after taking the exit I drove a considerable distance into "town" without finding anything but other businesses (e.g., a tattoo parlor). Highway 1 becomes Mission Street inside Santa Cruz, with amazingly dense traffic. I spot a Taco Bell, and after some considerable maneuvering manage to get over to it. We see young people at the corners in costumes. Traffic thins slightly as we move out of downtown Santa Cruz, but there are more clumps of cars parked alongside the roads going north, apparently locals enjoying a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Jerri had called ahead about the lighthouse stamp at Ano Nuevo State Park, and the park kiosk attendant answering her call says that she has the stamp. What luck, don't have to fuss with the "library" being open or not. We find the park and get the stamp and have a nice chat with the young lady park attendant.

Oakland Hotel Continuing on, at the last beach stop before heading across the peninsula to San Mateo, I stop so we can use the public restroom. It's a long bridge across the bay into Hayward. Get to Oakland and exit I-880 at Embarcadero. Right there is Quinn's Lighthouse, our next destination, but we continue on to the Best Western hotel. It's a really nice room with a patio overlooking the water. And then we discover that, during the day, the distilled water bottle had popped its stopper and had sloshed onto the suitcase. My underwear and other items are wet. Before we leave for dinner, we spread out our wet things pending finding a guest laundry.

Quinn's at Night Quinn's Lighthouse is in fact a historic harbor-marker lighthouse, even if it no longer looks the part, but it is serving primarily as a restaurant. It's not fancy, you don't need reservations, but they're not using the nicer lower level, just the pub upstairs. Not a good sign. The waitress does not undersstand the stamp business, but her manager does, and before long the unsmiling managerer brings the stamped passport back to our table. My seafood ravioli is good, but Jerri's dinner is cold and overcooked.

Back at the hotel, I find that the guest laundry is in use.

Sunday October 31: East Bay Area and East Brother Light Station

Morning Walk to Quinn's The Best Western and the Executive Suites are adjacent sister properties, and the breakfast is at the Executive Suites. While Jerri is in the bathroom, I scout a route to the breakfast room and discover a trail along the channel. Quinn's Lighthouse restaurant is in easy walking distance

A colony of feral cats is hanging around Quinn's and the marina.

View from Oakland Hotel Breakfast is the same kind of food as at Carmel, but the sausage sandwiches are pre-heated in a chafing dish. The breakfast room attendants are aggressively sticky about guests wearing masks unless they're at a table. Silly. When I find that the laundry is still in use, we just bag up the wet clothes, pack up everything else, and leave. Jerri snaps a shot of the channel and the little fishing pier outside our room's sliding glass door.

Quinn's in Daylight The first thing to do today is a photo of Quinn's Lighthouse in daylight.

And then to the Oakland waterfront. It's hard to make out the map; there's a vague region here called "Jack London Square" and I think the ferry terminal may be part of it. We are on the upper deck of the ferry terminal looking down at a collection of craft including a big freighter, FDR's yacht Potomac, and the red hull of Lightship Relief.

Relief Behind Potomac Closeup of the bow of Potomac and Relief. I guess there's a tug or a police boat in there, too.

Oakland Ferry Dock Looking south past the ferry boarding dock toward Alameda Island.

Jerri at Lightship Relief Then we come down and walk over to Relief and get Jerri's official photo, which she will send to the specified address to obtain her passport stamp.

Relief Bow Bow view of Relief, with both masts holding up the beacons and the characteristic exaggerated hawse of a lightship that rides at anchor for extended periods of time.

Since we're here, we're going to see what "Jack London Square" is, and we proceed to walk down Water Street. There is a tourist or visitor center here, closed and chained; I guess they're not open on Sundays. Outside the door is this golden elephant figure named "Tourist Stomper" or "Golden Stomper". At first I thought the elephant "Stomper" was a local ephemera like the scarecrows of Cambria; I later learn that the "Stomper" is the mascot of the Oakland Athletics and specifically of their soccer team. There are a number of these decorated "Stompers" about, and we see one outside a fancy restaurant further down.
www.timeout.com/san-francisco/news/50-colorful-stomper-statues-have-taken-over-oakland-050718

Jack London Statue Today, a "farmer's market" is set up along Water Street. We have to traverse a series of tents with odd people selling "art" or clothes or just plain junk, and then come to this feature in the waterfront with broad steps going down to the water, as if it were seating, and a statue of Jack London. On the other side of this point, the "farmer's market" become more properly a farmer's market at which the booths have vegetables and other home-produced comestibles for sale.

And then we arrive at Jack London Square proper. The prominent feature is London's cabin, found in the Yukon when he was prospecting. Half of the cabin was brought back to his native Oakland and reconstructed using original and reproduction components, and the other half was sent to Dawson City, Yukon, Canada, near where the cabin was found. So there are two more or less identical Jack London cabins in the world.

Jack London Mural A mural of the adventures of Jack London. I guess when you're Oakland you have to claim what you can. I'm wondering how many schoolchildren in Oakland even know who Jack London was or have read Call of the Wild or The Sea Wolf or To Build a Fire (I had to read that in English class). Plus, London was a socialist, so that would fit in with the general outlook of the Bay area.

Downtown Oakland "Jack London Square" has been something of a let-down. I was thinking something more like "Seaport Village", but the region is characterized more by fancy hotels and reservation-only restaurants. After fetching the car from the parking structure, I drive through downtown just to get a feel of the place. And to keep an eye out for a parking spot; you don't really get a feel for a downtown area without walking around it. Plus, it would be nice to get a closer look at the Oakland Tribune building, which in its day was the tallest structure in Oakland. But, the streets are choked with curb parking, and we have places to be, so... drive on!

Vallejo is something like half-an-hour from Oakland. We make the attempt One More Time to get the stamp at the former Carquinez Strait lighthouse. It's not a lighthouse, but rather the keeper's house that has been repurposed as an event venue, and there is a rich-folk children's birthday party being set up while we're getting Jerri's official photo. The stamp is supposed to be at the marina office which is right next door to the event venue, but it is closed (well, it is Sunday) and has a sign taped to the glass door with a phone number. Subsequent attempts to contact them with emails and phone calls and self-addressed-stamped-envelopes containing bribes I mean donations have all failed to produce a response of any sort.

Eucalyptus at Tilden The big event for the day is to be at San Pedro at 4:00 to catch the boat to East Brother. It's still mid-morning. What to do? Jerri looks through some tourist suggestions on her cellphone and says something that I heard as "tide pools". That sounds good, let's go there. She feeds me directions as we drive back across the (toll-bridge) I-80 bridge across (yes) the Carquinez Strait and into the Berkeley area.

We go up and down the steep hills of a residential area with winding narrow roads with cars parked halfway out into the lane (so there's only one lane for driving, and fortunately we never encounter oncoming traffic). I'm thinking, this is nowhere near the sea and "tide pools", but I'm game. The GPS keeps sending us round and round the same streets until I finally figure out we need to go down this side road. At the bottom of a steep hill is Tilden Regional Park, a large nature preserve that stretches inland of the city from Richmond to Berkeley. There are lots of families with young children and a playground at the parking lot. A sign board with a map indicates "Little Farm" and "Jewel Lake". That sounds nice, and we walk a long ways down the path until we get to this thick stand of eucalyptus trees (in the midst of one of the most densely-populated places in North America!) and realize we must have missed it.

Dam at Tilden Returning along the path, we find this concrete dam. Don't know how we missed this coming down.

Jewel Lake Behind the dam is a pretty little lake. I guess I was expecting a lake with broad grassy boundaries for kids to play in. It would be difficult for any but enterprising youngsters with a disregard for mud and personal safety to explore the lake.

Dam Overlook The lake comes right up to the dam. Very picturesque. And, that's about all the time we have for a side-trip. The route out of Tilden back to the highway is the more-direct (and steep, tough on the brakes) Marin Street. We take the freeway to nearby Richmond. Stenmark Drive curves round and round past a thinly industrial area, and what looks like an abandoned military post. Toward the point, I can see the lighthouse island from the road, but there's no time to stop. The road continues curling up over a ridge and down into San Pablo Marina. The parking lot is stuffed, but I can find an empty slot where we can stop and repack Jerri's backpack with a minimum of overnight stuff. Then I recheck the paper from EBLS and find details including special no-tow parking spots. I leave Jerri on the top of an embankment (did I mention it had been raining, and the parking lot was muddy?) to drive back to the parking lot attendant's booth and ask. He looks over at the "special EBLS parking" and sees they are all filled up, and then instructs me where to park to avoid having my car towed away after hours.

Halloween Band Now I can go back and rejoin Jerri. The boarding point for the boat to EBLS is right next to "Black Star Pirate BBQ". We haven't had lunch, and this looks like the last chance. To our surprise and bemusement, there is an adult Halloween party in progress. With a band in which the musicians are also in costume. Even the accordion player. Outside the tent, there are people (mostly in costume) dancing to the music.

Halloween Guests The food is good, but it arrives about 20 minutes before the boat is due. Sure enough, I have to bolt the rest of my brisket sandwich when the little motor boat pulls up and ties at the dock.

Approaching EBLS The host couple gets everyone on board the boat and puts the luggage in the rope locker to keep it out of the water. Then they cast off, motor out of the marina, and throttle up for the quick trip to the island. I have to hold onto my hat. When the boat gets to the dock, we have to climb the slippery wooden ladder about ten feet to the dock (Jerri manages brilliantly). Then the man clips slings to the boat and operates the winch to pull the boat out of the water up to the dock, at which point he can hand out the luggage.

We deposit our few bags in our nice room in the lighthouse proper.

Lighthouse Curtains Lace curtains with a lighthouse theme - we will have to see if we can get this pattern for our bathroom and/or kitchen at home.

The guests then have an opportunity to look around before apperitifs are served on the patio. Jerri and I find our way upstairs. From the top we can see the I-580 bridge stretching across the entrance to San Pablo Bay, and beyond, the tall buildings of San Francisco and the Bay Bridge.

San Francisco from San Pablo

Staircase from Top The last course of stairs comes up into the lens chamber through this hatch.

Jerri on Upper Deck Jerri on the upper level.

A bell rings, announcing apperitifs. All the guests come down and are seated in the patio outside the kitchen door at a round table with a lazy-susan feature. We get to learn something about our hosts and guests.

Bryan and Stephanie are the hosts. This is their second time hosting at EBLS, and they've been here since September. The lighthouse people called them to plead with them to return just before they left on their sailboat trip to England.
A veterinarian couple from San Diego.
A retired graphics designer about to leave his wife in San Francisco to go to Minnesota to take care of his ailing mother.
Heather has been here a few days already, She is a teacher at her own school, lives in El Cerrito (near Tilden park), her husband is here, too, but he is upstairs resting. She is very strong in her (mostly leftist) opinions.
Katherine and Stephen from Bodega Bay, she is dressed in a mermaid Halloween costume.

The party breaks up a bit while our hosts go inside to put the final touches on dinner. The lights in Oakland and San Francisco are starting to come on.

Nightfall on the Bay

Dinner is a four-course meal that starts with lentil soup, progresses to asparagus tarts, then to chicken picatta, and finishes with pumpkin bread pudding. Delicious; Stephanie is an accomplished chef. I'm pleased to note that Jerri eats it all. More conversation during dinner:

People are generally unconcerned or rather supportive that their children move in with their boyfriends and girlfriends without benefit of marriage.
Pretty much everyone there is well-travelled.
They don't like Texas.
They think people (i.e., "illegal" border crossers) should be able to go wherever they need to,
San Diego Comicon is not really fun anymore (it's too crowded); Burning Man is better (and they're okay with public nudity).
In the recent spate of California wildfires, Petaluma was not burned, but Santa Rosa suffered some.
Homes in Bodega Bay start around $!.5 million.
Some have been in Marfa but nobody has seen the Lights (in Texas, I guess you can go there even if you don't like it) (but then, we're here in California, in the Bay Area, no less)

East Brother at Night After dinner, everyone goes off to bed. There are two couples (including us) on the first floor of the lighthouse, and there is a common bathroom. I have trouble sleeping tonight in spite of the comfortable room (I suspect I'm anxious about tomorrow's tight schedule; plus it doesn't help to have the foghorn hooting outside every few minutes), and I have to visit the bathroom a few times, stepping carefully over the creaky wood floor.

Monday November 1: Alcatraz

Morning Ferry Since I can't sleep, I just get up at 7 and go outside. I can watch the dawn rise on San Francisco way out there. The Vallejo ferry passes.

Freighter behind West Brother A tanker steams past on the other side of West Brother with a tugboat escort. Yes, East Brother is an actual island big enough to build a lighthouse on; the other Brother is just a big bare rock. I can watch the water shoaling between the two islands.

First Set of Stairs Before breakfast, I mention my concern to Bryan, and he offers to take us back a bit early. Breakfast is fruit, fried potato and tomato slices, and spinach souflee. After breakfast, Bryan is going to demonstrate the foghorn, but there will be some time before that. After packing our bags, Jerri and I go on a daylight exploration. The second floor is reached by a straight flight of stairs outside. The next level up, the "machinery room" (now occupied by batteries and electrical gear) is reached by this elegant but steep curving staircase.

Second Set of Stairs And then this flight of steep, narrow stairs goes up to the lantern chamber.

Foghorn at EBLS Looking down, on the northwest corner of the island is the automatic foghorn.

Across the patio or catchment basin is the fog signal building, with twin diaphones on the roof.

Caretakers Quarters To the left is the redwood tank for potable water and the shed where the hosts/lighthouse keeper are quartered.

Catchment Basin and Tank In the center is the big tank, mostly underground, where the rainwater was collected to operate the steam whistle.

Patio Table The patio furniture where we sat talking and munching our nuts and cheese and sipping our champagne and apple juice last night.

David on Top Deck Here I am on the top platform, with San Raphael behind me. The sky is darkinging.

Jerri on Top Deck Here is Jerri, with San Pablo behind her.

Beacon Flashing in Daylight The beacon flashes.

Jerri and Beacon Jerri in the lantern chamber next to the beacon.

Starting the Compressors Bryan calls us down for the demo. Inside the fog signal building, he does the usual lighthouse lens lecture; the original fourth-order is there, and the subsequent electric beacon with the rotating plastic Fresnel lens. Then he starts the demonstration: he bleeds the reserve pressure in the large tanks, hands out hearing protectors, fires up the diesel generator, and switches on the big compressor,

Watching the Clock We all watch the clock to mark the five minutes it takes for the pressure to build.

Waiting for the Whistle When the pressure threshold is reached, he sends us outside and turns on the timed diaphone control. When the first contact trips - "EEEE", and when the second contact trips - "OOOOH".

Behind the fog signal building, he demonstrates the backup bell with the automatic electric hammer.

In just a few minutes, he is going to make the first run back to the mainland. We fetch our bags and take some photos on the way out. This lovely wardrobe was available for hanging our stuff in, and there was a selection of books and games inside for a longer, more relaxing, more expensive stay.

Common Dining Room The dining room, with the back door and the common bathroom.

Jerri visits the "gift shop" to get her passport stamp and a good many mementos. Outside, she takes her parting photo of the East Brother Lighthouse. It has been a fantastic experience.

Stairs to Dock Note that it is raining. We have to be careful walking down the slippery wooden steps. Bryan offers to let people ride the boat down instead of climbing the ladder, and Jerri takes the offer. Since it is high tide, the boat doesn't descend very far. Everyone has decided to take the boat back now, so the "early" boat trip has turned into the only trip.

Departing East Brother Light Station. In the rain.

Departing East Brother Light Station

Leaving Black Star Pirate BBQ Looks like the barbeque place isn't open in the morning. Or everyone is nursing their hangovers. The parking lot is empty except for us EBLS patrons, and thankfully, our car is still there.

Golden Gate in Rain We start toward San Francisco via the north bay. Around Sausalito, the stupid windshield wipers hang up, and I have to get off the 101 and fix them before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in the rain. We then enter the pokey San Francisco city traffic. By the time we get to our reserved parking location (at Pier 29 1/2), our parking time just started - we're exactly on time!

I figured there ought to be food sources on the Embarcadero, but there appear to be none. I get the umbrellas, the passport book, and a protein bar out of the car, and we board an earlier boat.

Approaching Alcatraz Island in the rain.

Approaching Alcatraz

As we get off the boat at the island, a ranger in a slicker motions everyone over to do an orientation talk; we stand under the porch out of the rain and can't really understand him. Don't think we missed much. As we start walking up the slope, we pass a ranger checkpoint and notice the park passport stamps. Up the ramp and off to the side, there's an exhibit about Alcatraz' start as a Union fortress during the Civil War period. It's a mostly empty room, and the theater is closed.

At the top of the ramp is the "Cellblock". As we enter, a park attendant hands us an audio gadget, and says they're better than the cellphone app which cuts out a lot. Unlike the Alamo audio tour, the narration just keeps going, expecting you to keep up; all you can do is pause it.

Cell with Fake Occupant The guiding principle for Alcatraz was: Follow the rules, do good time, keep your privileges. The cells are small, and inmates couldn't hang stuff on the walls. That was unlike the Clint Eastwood movie Escape from Alcatraz, for which this cell is made up as an example: There is a dummy head on the pillow and the ventilation grill under the sink is removed. The movie was a mostly-accurate recreation of the actual escape attempt (maybe the only successful one?).

D Block We pass through the library (many inmates read much better than people on the outside) and the visitation stations. D Block was different; there was no cell structure on the opposite wall, just the translucent windows, and this is where Solitary Confinement was.

The Hole Including the infamous "Hole - no light, no sound, the guards would check on the prisoner once a day and feed him.

The tour ends in the Dining hall. The inmates got good food. There were tear gas cylinders on the ceiling (not there any more) but were never used. We return the audio gadgets and pass through an exhibit about mass incarceration. Many other countries don't do mass incarcerations (although it didn't mention the many outher countries that do). The penal theory of justice being replaced by restorative justice. There were remarks aiming to say that blacks are more prone to incarceration than other groups; the example provided was of cocain users (33%) versus blacks jailed for cocain offences (80%). Note: the criterion is "equity", nothing about the disproportionate rate of committing offenses. The gift shop was only about prison stuff (I note videos of The Rock movie with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage), nothing about the history of the site, such as the Civil War period and the brief Indian occupation.

Alcatraz Light Outside the cellblock is the lighthouse, and here is Jerri's official photo. Looking over the rail, we can see the parade grounds that was cut out of the rock by military prisoners, including Confederate prisoners of war and sympathizers. Looking down on the north side are the terraces where the garrison officers had their quarters and gardens. It is very windy out here, and our umbrellas turn inside out. I've about had it with the miserable wind and the annoying rain and dampness. We've seen the lighthouse, we've got the stamp, we've done the usual tourist thing, I don't care to see the parts of the island about the Indian occupation, and there's no food for sale here,

Relic of Fort Alcatraz The descent takes us through this Civil War-era fortification with the lovely bricks and the date.

Boat Approaching for Departure The boat is approaching the dock.

Alcatraz Sign Yep. We were here. Check it off the list.

Departing Alcatraz Island in the rain.

Pier 33 As the ferry noses around to its berth, we pass Pier 33.

Pier 33 Closeup Some of the old commercial markings are still visible. The seaport is now in Oakland, and I guess that's a good thing, because these old piers from the days where small freighters were unloaded manually by dockworkers would have been torn down and replaced by the cranes for containers. The San Francisco waterfront would have taken an ugly industrial image.

Pier 31 Pier 31, with its colorful "Welcome Home" motif.

Colorful Seals Lined Up Upon debarking, Jerri and I walk over to Pier 39. Here are a row of painted-up sea lion figures. I wonder if these are the local equivalent of Cambrian "scarecrows" or Oakland "stompers".

Seals at Pier 39 It's nice to get out of the damp and into some sandwiches and chowder in a sourdough breat bowl at the Boudin's place at Pier 39. Jerri steps into a gift shop for postcards; practically everything in the gift shop was prison-related, bad-taste jokes. Then we get some Dreyer's ice-cream to eat on the way back to our car.

Trolley on Embarcadero Here comes one of the old trolleys up the Embarcadero. There are still things I would like to do and see in San Francisco, including riding the trolleys, and see Coit Tower, and maybe look around downtown San Francisco, if the place weren't being ideologically mismanaged into the garbage can.

Beacon at Yacht Club There are a few things left to do and see today. Looking at the electronic map, there's a "wave organ" along the waterfront here. We park the car and proceed on foot past this marvelous harbor marker light. Which I note isn't lit.

Wave Organ Placard Found it. It's a thing, and apparently functional.

Jerri at Wave Organ Although it doesn't look very good. I can't make up my mind whether the state of the "wave organ" is actually decay or if that's the intentional style.

Wave Organ Pipes Apparently, during certain seasons like high tide, the wave action makes sounds through these pipes that stick out all over the place. I don't hear anything but far-away gurgling.

Wave Organ from Above It's... interesting, I guess. Different, certainly.

Dredge Ah, now here is something that actually works. A dredge is under operation pulling silt out of the inlet to the yacht harbor.

Palace Columns Across the street is the Palace of Fine Arts. We walk around the wet grass to Marina Blvd and cross over. These impressive columns are just a foretaste.

Palace framed by Columns If the rainy, cloudy weather was irritating at EBLS and Alcatraz, it is a perfect setting for this architecture.

Colonnade at Palace A fantastic collonade around the reflective lagoon.

Classical Column Base They just don't make stuff like this anymore. I don't think they can. I'm pretty sure they don't want to.

Palace Rotunda The central pavilion and dome with accent lights that perfectly suit the damp early evening.

Rotunda Detail Magnificent. I think it's a bit funny that, while it was built back in the early 20th Century when such classical references were appreciated, the Palace of Fine Arts is now just another modern concert venue.

Lucasfilm Marker The floor is dotted with markers from significant benefactors. Such as Lucasfilm (certainly before it was absorbed by the Disney Borg).

Crissy Field Sign Jerri has wanted to see Crissy Field since getting the national park stamp "illicitly" at Fort Point last time we were here. It's back across the street on the way to where we parked the car.

Crissy Field Yep, it's a field. It used to be an aviation field, but now it's a big flat grassy area for San Franciscans to play with their dogs. There is a visitors' center here, but of course it is closed at this hour, and we won't be back.

Sure is a great place to see the Golden Gate Bridge lit up at night, though.

Golden Gate at Dusk

The hotel is not too far from where we are, and after some confusion about parking (like most urban hotels, it has a subterranean parking garage which inspires terror of getting your car stuck on a ramp), we unload and set up for the next few days. There doesn't appear to be much in the way of dining around here. We settle for Chinese food delivery and dinner after 9:00.

For Part 4, go here.