Travel date: July 7, 2017
Alcatraz is a fascinating blank slate of an island. People have been writing stories on it for hundreds of years, and wandering the island, reading through the layers of what’s been left behind, is an amazing experience. Fort, prison, site of an 18 month occupation by Native Americans….it’s all still here to some degree or another, along with the bits of the non-human world that can survive here.
We were here with four adults and six kids, ranging in age from four to sixteen; everyone had a good time, but we did do some splitting up. Dave and I peeled off early on with Abe so that he could do the Junior Ranger program without slowing the big kids down, and this worked really well for us.
Alcatraz Island, as the name suggests, is an island….a barren, rocky island just off the coast from San Francisco, so you have to do some advance planning to get here. Particularly if you’re coming during the summer. You’ll need to take a concessionaire-operated ferry, which you can book something like 90 days in advance, and you should book as soon as you know your dates if you’re coming during a busy time of year. When we were there, the next available ferry tickets were weeks away.
There’s no federal fee to enter Alcatraz, but since you can’t get there without taking a ferry, it’s far from free. And your America the Beautiful pass won’t help you out at all, either. There are a number of different tour options, including nighttime tours, a behind the scenes tour, and one that also visits Angel Island. We did the regular old daytime tour, and that runs $38 a ticket for adults, and $23.25 for kids 5-11. Abe was still free! Seniors save a whopping $2.25 off the adult price. The ticket prices include the short ferry ride and an audio tour of the prison.
Once you’re on the island, you can take any ferry you want back, so there’s plenty of time to explore. We started off by picking up a Junior Ranger book for Abe as soon as we got off the boat.
There’s a video you can watch down here, too, but I don’t think any of us did. The big kids all took off with Amy and Craig while Dave and Abe and I followed more slowly, working on the book. The Junior Ranger program here is really nicely done; it’s set up like a scavenger hunt and takes you all over the island looking for certain things and places, with questions and activities about each one. These are my favorite Junior Ranger books–the ones that guide you through exploring the site with kids and point out interesting things at a kid-appropriate level along the way. Of course, this only really works with smaller sites. A step by step guide to exploring Yellowstone wouldn’t be feasible.
Alcatraz has no natural source of water (aside from rainfall). It’s mostly rock; before human habitation the thin soil sustained just some sparse native grasses and shrubs. The attempts to turn this barren rock into something beautiful started during the Civil War with the importation of soil to support gardens. The gardens grew from there and were an important way of bringing a little beauty into an otherwise harsh landscape for prison guards and their families and the prisoners themselves during Alcatraz’s federal penitentiary days. After decades of neglect, the gardens are thriving again today:
This was my favorite building for taking pictures:
We met back up with the rest of the group in the main prison building for the audio tour. Everyone except Abe thought this was exceptionally well done. It was very crowded, what with the months and months of sold out ferries, but the tour does a great job of keeping you on track and keeping the crowds dispersed. And the stories about the prison are fascinating; they’ve gotten actual prisoners and guards to narrate parts of it. Super highly recommend you do the audio tour if you come to Alcatraz–even if it means trying to entertain a bored preschooler and still hear what’s going on.
Lots more on the theme of finding meaning and purpose and beauty in a harsh, brutal environment:
After the audio tour, we made our way back down to the ferry, stopping to admire baby birds along the way. They were hard to take good pictures of, but they were adorable:
And up next: we finally start heading back east!
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