1. Alcatraz. A place that has fascinated Curt since childhood. We rented, and took turns listening to, an excellent audiotape tour of the prison. Curt also bought three books on the prison and ordered a model and videotape of it. Highlights of our tour included:

Families of prsion employees lived on Alcatraz, though little remains of their houses and other buildings	Where Clint "Frank Morris" Eastwood made his escape from his cell (through the hole in the wall, not the toilet)

• Seeing the cells from which Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers escaped the prison building. (The holes they made in the walls were visible and the fake heads they used to fool the guards into believing they were in bed were on display). This escape attempt, the thirteenth at "The Rock" was the basis of the Clint Eastwood movie, Escape From Alcatraz.
• Entering the solitary confinement cells ("The Hole")

The isolation cells used for solitary confinement	Two captured members of the Frantz gang

3. Fort Point. Located beneath the San Francisco end of the Golden Gate bridge, this Civil War era fort was built along the same design as Fort Sumter, Charleston S.C.. As a result of bombardments, Sumter was reduced to a one story wall. No battle ever occurred at Fort Point, it's still three stories high. Initial plans for building the Golden Gate bridge called for demolishing the fort. The fort was spared and used from 1941–43 to protect the bridge. The closest an inmate came to a successful escape from Alcatraz ended in that inmate ?????, being washed ashore at Fort Point. Exhausted and nearly dead from exposure to the cold water, he was found and easily captured.

Inside the walls Fort Point	Atop Fort Point, nestled beneath the Golden Gate Bridge

4. Palace of Fine Arts. Beautiful architecture and a lagoon with pigeons, gulls, ducks, and swans. We fed the birds bread and had pigeons climbing on Eric and Curt to get their share.

The magnificent columns of the beatiful Palace of Fine Arts	Swarming, hungry pigeons

5. We rode around the city for awhile, looking for steep hills to drive up and down. Eric asked us to hold hands on the way down so we would all be safe.

1. Cliff House. From the bluffs, one looks out over Seal Rocks. We saw a few seals basking in the sun. The ruins of the Cliff House Baths are beneath the bluffs. It used to be the largest indoor, salt water pool in the world. All that remains are the foundations and some stairs.

2. We walked to nearby Ocean Beach. Missy and Eric found many intact sanddollars which they brought back as souvenirs.

3. San Francisco Zoo. This zoo is a throwback to the old days when large animals were kept in small cages. Changes have been made giving some animals, notably the gorillas, more space and many more changes are in plan. Eric's favorite part was meeting up with another Victoria crowned pigeon in the aviary.

4. On the way out, we returned to Cliff House and bought a Giant Sequoia sapling. We planned on planting it in a pot in our house until we could figure out a place for it in our yard. How many other people have a Giant Sequoia growing in their house?

5. For dinner we got a mix of six vegan meals from a whole foods grocery store. We also had tofutti for dessert. It was our best meal of the trip.

6. Claudia had company over that night and she, a concert violinist, and a visitor, an amateur musician who plays the viola, gave an in–house concert. They played a Mozart duet for strings. It was fantastic to hear and we felt it as well since we were so close to the music.

1. With the rest of his family, we met Dan Pitt at the airport.

2. Even though he was just getting back from a trip to Japan, Dan was up for a trip to the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. This museum had many things we hadn't seen in other children's museums. Highlights included:

Wells Fargo stagecoach was synonymous
with San Francisco