Visited: Friday, June 29th - Saturday, June 30th, 2012
For all the times I've traveled to the San Francisco area, I've never gone out to Alcatraz. So it was nice to fix that. The audio tour was highly recommended to us, and was well worth it. But the bigger treat for me was in the bookstore, where the son of a former Alcatraz guard - who lived on the island during the Battle of Alcatraz - was signing his books. As with Nick Clifford at Mount Rushmore - and formerly Buck O'Neil at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum - these folks bring the history to life.
It was also very enjoyable to hear the full modern history of the island. But - it feels much more commercial than most NPS sites, and attracts as many (or more) folks in a day as the Eugene O'Neill site does in a year. I think, on the whole, I prefer the smaller, less frequently - frequented sites.
Also part of the same park, officially, is the Presidio of San Francisco, which has a new if currently rather sparse visitor center. But the big attraction is recordings from those affected by the anti-Japanese sentiments during World War II, and how their lives were changed.
On Saturday, we returned to the area, to visit the Marin Headlands. It's an interesting part of the Golden Gate area, requiring a drive through a one-way tunnel to get there, but featuring a missile site, a lighthouse, a lagoon, and a beach for the effort.
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