Santa Cruz on Friday whatever the fuckin' date was, saw us walking along the ocean while a Kansas State Fair-like crowd was bumping into each other like zombies on the boardwalk. A few members from Santana, one from Journey, and some person I had never heard before played on a stage set up on the boardwalk. They attempted to play Evil Ways.
This beach wasn't your picturesque waterfront, and I've gotta say I've never in my life seen a clean beach. Kelp was everywhere, some broken glass, cans; essentially garbage. People had written useless things in the sand like other people gave a shit whether Becca loves Leroy. As long as the dogs that walked with their owners along the beach continued to take massive shits in the sand, Becca loves Leroy in Santa Cruz is like writing Becca loves Leroy in the dirt at the dump.
No pictures. I didn't want to walk to the beach at Santa Cruz. I would have been much more happy in the water at Monterrey. We traveled up the sidewalk away from the boardwalk to enter a bodega to get milk, donuts, and bananas since the hotel we were staying at for the night had a refrigerator. Saturday we embarked on an expedition to Monterrey full of many cinematic seacapes, and of course Pebble Beach. And here's that.
That lighthouse in the background houses the oldest glass lens for any lighthouse in North America. Not the light bulb, the lens. We drove around to see the lighthouse closer, but I didn't take pictures then. I take that back, I did take a picture...
Surrounding Monterrey...
Here's these fuckin' birds again. Seagulls are pigeons; pigeons of the sea. They shat all over this rock!
OH MY GOD IT'S MY DAD'S HAIRY ARM!!!
My mom said get a picture of these flowers. Sighing, I switched to my macro-function and took the picture. It's not a bad flower-picture!
Sunday, we had a blast at Alcatraz, first taking a ferry over to the island - a 10 minute sea voyage in all. Here's pictures of that.
Those are pelicans flying over the pier. Pelicans.
Approaching The Rock.
The Jeremiah O'Brien was in port. I could easily find out what the significance of this vessel is, but I won't on the off chance it isn't significant.
Next, the island itself. This is what it looks like when you are resting at the dock on-board the ferry to the island.
From the dock, you stick around for an orientation. I guess they've had problems in the past with people going off to areas of the island they're not supposed to. Uh-oh Spagettioes! A guy with a microphone that had one of the longest cables to the microphone I've ever seen asked the audience if they had ever heard any history of the island being a prison, or seen a Hollywood movie depiction of the prison. A lot of people raised their hands. He then asked if we had seen a Hollywood depiction of the Native American tribe that was camped here by the government. Nobody raised their hands. He then replied, "You would have had you learned anything about the island before you came to it. But maybe our information will lead you to wanna read up on the island and its past-inhabitants." Wrong. Again, another fucking person out there who thinks they are so enlightened to know more than anyone else about one topic. So I didn't delve into more useless information about Native Americans. Nowhere on Alcatraz is it evident that Native Americans occupied the island. It is the dilapidated remains of the most infamous prison in America that draws in the tourists.
Back to the topic, this was the old officer's quarters.
The main building of the prison is located up a spiraling road on top of a hill in the middle of the island. Inside, you take an audio tour through the prison.
You got your clothes here once you came to the prison.
Here's your shower.
And depending on what your sentence was, this could be your room. A-block.
All the lovely furnishings of a jail cell.
D-block, or, the cell block Al Capone was confined to.
Below D-block was solitary. Nice! This would be the part of the prison you'd wanna stay out of if you were scared of inmates. And if you were in solitary, you weren't a good person.
The gun gallery. I picture two guards walking this hall overlooking the prisoners, with rifles in hand, as well as a side arm. The key hanging from the rod actually unlocked each cell. I don't want to spoil the bedtime story, but an inmate did attack a guard opening his cell, the inmate got out, climbed up to that key, yanked it off the rod, took a bar splitter, got into the gun gallery, incapacitated the guard walking the hall, took his gun as well as his keys, made his way back to the cells to release his friends from their cells, as well as every cellmate on the block, all this leading to what was described as The Battle of Alcatraz. Other guards on the block were locked in a cell, and guns in their faces, were told to hand over their keys because even though that one key did unlock a few cells, it didn't unlock the door leading outside the prison. The prisoners were out, but they were still locked in a building. The guards didn't cooperate, and were executed. Searching the bodies of the guards, the prisoners found out that the men had hidden the key to the outside, so executing them was worthless. The National Guard was called in to handle the situation on the island, and to this day, blast marks left behind from grenades hurled into the prison from guardsmen on the roof are still visible on the floors.
This is of the view just outside the warden's office. On the tour this is your last stop. The city looks close doesn't it?
Here's the mess hall. Sit down, have a bowl of cereal or eat miscellaneous critters and debris from the floor; have a gay-ol' time!
From here, we returned our audio tour devices, then walked to port to catch the next ferry. The boats were in 30 min. intervals, so we missed the next departing ferry by ten minutes. It was cool. We just stood in line for twenty so we'd definitely be on the next one. It wasn't long, twenty minutes or so, and we were on the ferry again. Here's another shot of the harbor.
All in all, San Francisco was illuminating. We did what a normal family might have done in two weeks in that week and one day, or two-weeks if you rounded up and even then it's still just a week because wouldn't it have to be a few days into the week for you to round it up to two-weeks and not just one day?
The flight back to Kansas was uneventful, but it was 117 in Phoenix when we landed. Fuck Phoenix! The last pictures speak for themselves. That's the amazing thing about pictures. Without communicating the message, it still can capture a moment. Like a mime.
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