Over and Up

Over where?  Over there!  The Rock.  Alcatraz.  Not that my photography shows it, but the white building was glowing compared to the gray sky.  It was ephemeral.

 

But, before we cot on we had to figure out when it came back.  Surprisingly difficult information to locate.  It wasn't on there website, tickets, or any brochure we saw.   Thus an ingenious use for a digital camera was born, note taker.  We figured if we had a picture we could reference it later.  

Look, off in the distance.... squint if you have to. The majestic Golden Gate Bridge.  This was our first sighting of the gate.  It is surprisingly cool, even from a distance.  Later, up close, when the scale became apparent it was even cooler.

I have a thing for taking shots of American flags.  This one also includes an old man who's just realized he's in my picture.  Wonder if he thought I was going to blog about him.  Because of that, I'm going to make up some background.  Old Man Bill was  a nice old man, with nary a worry in the world.  Except for the prevalence of digital cameras and bloggers which constantly put his witness protection anonymity at risk.  I don't think the kid in the background was checking out the docking maneuver, not vomiting. 

As we got closer we started to notice that the prison is on top of a rather large hill (thus the up after the over).  

On the path up one gets the sense that no one planned to maintain the property.   The vast majority of buildings are decrepit and falling to pieces.

Green and still kicking.  This building's got a roof.  So not quite decrepit, but you get what I mean.

 

The hill climb.  The Forest Service lady said is was equivalent to walking eight flights of stairs.  I was pleasantly surprised that only the disabled and old took the golf cart powered tram.  Honestly, I expected the pure laziness factor to dominate causing every Tom, Dick, and Harry to ride.  Perhaps it was the lack of Americans.  It seemed most visitors were not of our country.

 

I'm assuming this is the old power plant.  Nowadays I think they call them physical plants.  Ya' know, where the boiler for the radiator heating and whatnot.  Growing up we used to have a red brick incinerator at the end of the block that looked a fair bit like this.  Maybe its a trash incinerator.  Hmm, maybe prisoners are trash? They did have a gas chamber on the island.   Well, that's the over and up.  Tomorrow we'll do the in, and after the out maybe if your lucky the turn it all about.   Enjoy, jon