s-rinehart photography blog

Before I moved away, I wasn’t very thrilled about moving to Oklahoma. I kept saying that I’d be back often enough, so I shouldn’t be so sad, but… I was moving away from home, from everything familiar. More than a few people told me the same thing: “You can’t go home again.”

I know this is true. I know that the places I frequented will be forever altered for me when I return, even if nothing has changed at all. Places may be almost permanent, but the sentiment attached to a place is, sadly, transitory. Even with the growing independence of living in Oklahoma, with all the good and bad memories I’ve created there, I always look forward to going home. I know it won’t be the same, I won’t have my old room, but I just get so excited at the prospect of being where things are so familiar.

The thing everyone left out is that coming back to your home, that place you grew and loved and hated and needed to leave but never did, makes you appreciate everything you used to dislike. I love West Virginia. It’s my home. It’s the one place in my nomadic childhood that I stayed. I grew to love. I think it’s beauty is unparalleled. I’ve lived many places, and visited even more within the continental United States, and I always come back to West Virginia as my favorite.

I mean, come on, guys. I have the state tattooed on my foot.

There’s an increasing feeling of calm the longer I’m in West Virginia. The first morning I woke up at my parents house, I couldn’t help but notice that I never realized how quiet it is when you sleep far away from the road. Or how dark it gets at night. How many stars you can see. How many things are just different. I forgot so many things, like how many trees there are, and I have an entirely new appreciation for all of it… Even if I’m constantly suffering an allergy attack.

I’ve been a tourist in a few American cities, and even lived in one. I’ve been to Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, Oklahoma City (duh), Orlando, New York City (although briefly), Washington DC, and none of them ever quite appealed to me. Chicago seemed like it could be fun, but everything was so spread out, it made going to all the different neighborhoods difficult. Seattle was beautiful, beautiful, but I wasn’t a fan of the people for some reason. The others either weren’t interesting enough, or I outright hated for some reason or another.

San Francisco, however, completely won my heart. I went for a work conference and decided, months ago, to stay a few extra days. My dad was flying to San Fran for a conference just as mine was ending. I used my extra days to do my fair share of touristy things, as well as a lot of lounging about and eating as much as possible.

I’m going to use my next few posts to talk about the different things I loved in San Francisco, and what exactly I loved about the city.

First, the major tourist attraction of San Francisco: Alcatraz!

If you plan on making a trip to The Rock, get your tickets in advance. You can order them from a couple of different websites, but everything I read and everyone I talked to advised getting your tickets well in advance. Apparently, at times, the tickets will sell out weeks ahead of time. After taking the tour, I can see why.

When you take the ferry to the island, you have a beautiful view of the city, the Golden Gate Bridge, and, of course, The Rock. There are also some fun birds that trail along behind the ferry, waiting for people to throw food overboard, I guess.

Alcatraz is also a walking audio tour. They say to set aside two and a half hours to take in the whole island. After being there for an hour and fifteeen minutes, I can see why. After all that time walking around, listening to the audio tour, we weren’t even through the main prison building. My only complaint was that, as it is an audio tour, I felt like I was constantly bumping into people. But once you get the hang of looking to make sure you aren’t going to run into anyone, it’s quite a lot of fun. It’s actually the best audio tour I’ve ever been on. It’s also just an incredibly beautiful island, which sounds weird since it was a prison. But… the gardens, the views. It was all pretty amazing.

It’s also a LOT of walking. Up hill, down hill, all over. Just a lot of hoofin’. There is a little golf cart trolley that takes people to the top of the hill to the main prison, and it seems very handicap accessible, if you’re worried about that.

Anyway… on to the pictures! Which were taken both with my phone and my camera.

Can you spot the Golden Gate in the picture above? That’s the view from the Alcatraz recreation yard…

And this picture is San Francisco as seen from the Island, by the Warden’s Quarters and office.

Next post: City Lights, coffee, and tattoos!