Big Trip--Day 3 (Alcatraz)

On Thursday came the excursion around which our entire trip was oriented--visiting Alcatraz. Linda's uncle Ernie Lageson was a guard on Alcatraz during the 1940s, and he and his family lived on the island for several years. Linda's cousin Ernie Jr. was even the paperboy for the island. Ernie Jr. has written several books about Alcatraz, both historical and personal, and visits the island frequently for book signings and the like. Mike and I actually ran into him by chance when we visited the island two years ago and he happened to be there the same day for a book signing.

Linda had wanted to visit Alcatraz with Ernie as our guide, so we planned ahead and bought tickets about 6 weeks before the trip. A good thing, too, as when we arrived at the dock a sign stated that the next available ferry tickets were for a week from that date! My parents joined us for the day, as neither of them had ever been to Alcatraz, despite both being California natives. Neither Ron nor Linda had been before either. Ernie met us at the Alcatraz ferry landing and we all headed over.

Once on the island we hiked up the hill to the Cell House. Alcatraz is part of the National Park Service, and Ernie knows many of the park rangers from his frequent trips to the island. He used his connections to get us "backstage" to parts of the Cell House that are usually off-limits to the general public. We got to go upstairs to the hospital wing, to see where they housed injured, sick, and mentally ill inmates. Mike got quite a few pictures which he was kind enough to allow me to include here...

I managed to get a few shots of Steven walking around one of the cells, but he's not great at holding still for pictures!

I wish he'd shifted just an inch to his left so we could see his face!

After our time on the island, we drove across the Bay Bridge to Kensington, where we had lunch and spent the afternoon with Ernie and his wife Jeanne at their home. They had a large backyard where Mike and I spent some time letting Steven run around.

Big Trip--Day 2 (SF Zoo)

So Mike started blogging about our recent CA trip in the last post. I think in order to keep my sanity I'm going to blog about the trip in several posts. This will allow me to post a little at a time and won't give you all picture overload.

As Mike alluded to in the previous post, while Steven adjusted to his PDT bedtime within a day, it took him about 5 or 6 days to adjust to a PDT wake-up time. On Wednesday, the day after our arrival, he woke up at 4:15 and babbled on and off, waking and sleeping, until we finally let him get up at 5:00. Thank goodness I had been exhausted and gone to bed myself at 8:00 pm the night before, so I got a decent night's sleep despite of the early wake up call.

On Wednesday, our first full day in SF, we went to the San Francisco Zoo. Amazingly I did not take any pictures. I guess we were having too much fun! It is a great zoo and one of the best parts is that it's close to the ocean and therefore rather cool and, at least in the morning, cloudy. This means that the animals are actually out and active and not hiding under a rock or tree somewhere escaping the heat. Steven got to see his favorites, the giraffes. He also liked the gorillas, the rhinos, and the penguins.

That evening we met up with my good friend Kristin for dinner at the Presidio Social Club. Steven pulled out all the stops for Kristin and was quite the charmer all through dinner. He even gave her some good high-five goodbyes afterwards...

He was also very interested in her bracelet...

Big trip (Part I)

In days of yore (about two weeks ago), it came to pass that the Michigan branch of the Unruh family crossed the continent of North America to join Grandma and Grandpa Unruh, as well as Gram and Grandpa B in the Golden State where the sun sets. Thus, Karen and Mike packed light, and loaded up the jalopy with all of Steven's earthly possessions. They crossed the mighty stream of Traffic, and ended up at the airport. And then the fun began...

Actually, it was a pretty smooth trip, all things considered. But we did look like the Beverly Hillbillies until the bags were checked. Sorry, but nobody took a picture. So you'll have to imagine the car seat strapped to the large suitcase. Quite a sight, I assure you.

We had a layover in MSP that lasted roughly 4 hours (our flight to MSP was bumped 30 minutes earlier, and we arrived earlier than that). Thankfully, MSP is about the most kid-friendly airport in existence.

Steven got to meet Snoopy (this becomes important for reasons you will see in a couple of posts):

Happiness is a warm puppy [that is three times as tall as you]

Then, Steven got to play in the play area at Concourse C:

Roger, Roger. What's your vector, Victor?

That's a 10-4, little buddy. What's your 20?

This was followed by a long flight to the Paris of the West. Steven slept while we taxied, which gave him about an hour's sleep, but was awake the entire flight. Needless to say, his father did not get any sleep or the chance to read his book during the flight. We tried to put him to bed that night on PDT, but he still woke up at EDT. D'oh!

More to come...