Alcatraz

Welcome back to my final post about California! To catch you up, I had a business trip to Napa a few weeks ago and decided to bring Stephen along for some of it so we could go early and see San Francisco (here and here) as well as Napa.

At this point, Stephen had already flown back home and we were right in the middle of the conference. Our big event of the trip was to take a private tour of Alcatraz after the conference one evening. The weather was super foggy and gross which added to the effect of the island. There is so much history at this place and I feel like I only heard the tip of it. We didn't get to see the whole island before it got dark but we heard some pretty cool stories about the areas we did see.

This little area was from when this was a military fort - they would corral everyone in the area where everyone is standing and then shoot them before they could enter the fort

This was the first prison cell on the island. It first housed some men who decided it'd be a good idea to get super drunk one night lol

This is remnants of the soda shop/dance hall/place where everyone hung out when people lived on the island

The morgue. They said the only person who died here was someone who worked on the island that had a heart attack

The prison

The mess hall

This lady lived on the island as a little girl - her dad was a guard (or someone who worked on the island). She had some fun stories for us

Al Capone's jail cell at one point

The cells were and still are mechanical; not electric

So these cells were in solitary confinement... they had 2 jail doors and it would be complete darkness. They locked some of us in there so we could experience it - don't think I'll ever be committing a crime, I wouldn't last a day in jail lol

She's locking the other group in there

This guy. He was a prison guard and an absolute riot! He told the craziest stories!

Once we were done on the island, we got on a dinner cruise boat and toured around the bay. The fog cleared up and was the most beautiful night!

Thanks for hanging in there with me through all of these really long posts! We will be on vacation next week in Hilton Head so I'll be taking a bit of a blogging break. You can still keep up with me on Instagram! Have a wonderful weekend :)