I’ve been reading a lot about Hurricane Ike in the last few days. Someone who was doing a search for Gilchrist found this post on Blogger, which I wrote in April 2007 while doing a road trip down the Texas Coast, birding during migration. There are a few photos of Galveston Island and Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. There’s also more on other parts of the Texas Coast–I drove all the way from High Island to Brownsville and then back to Denver.

One caveat–for those of you in the midst of the hurricane damage, the tone of the post may seem flippant. I was on vacation, trying to write in a way that would entertain my family back home. If you’d like to just look at the photos, you can find them here.

Here is a link to photos after the storm, and this is the NPR article. I looked at some of those photos and couldn’t even figure out where the road through Gilchrist was.

There’s also this article in the Christian Science Monitor.

I’ve never lived through a hurricane. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, I was sometimes awakened in the middle of the night to go sit out a tornado in the basement, but the two houses I lived in never got hit. I’ve experienced ice storms and snowstorms, but nothing like this. I admire the spirit displayed by the people who live there.

I’m very, very sorry.