I have lots of pictures today. These were taken over a period of several days. The first ones were taken last weekend when I finally got to see a Roseate Spoonbill. It was funny because we had spent the day before searching for these birds all over Galveston Island and then I saw one in a little pond at the RV park where we were staying. I love the color of these birds and their odd, spoon-shaped bills.
We had some rain and high winds Monday and Tuesday but it has been beautiful the past few days. Wednesday we drove back into Galveston in search of "the lost oaks." Galveston was hit very hard in 2008 by Hurricane Ike. It flooded the island and destroyed a lot of buildings. There was about 5 feet of water in downtown Galveston. One of the most devastating things was the loss of thousands of old oak trees. The city removed many of the stumps but commissioned chainsaw artists to turn some others into sculptures known as the lost oaks of Galveston. These sculptures are scattered throughout the city and are kind of difficult to find. We had fun looking for them and found quite a few.
We saw an angel...
dolphins...
a geisha...
a pelican...
some herons...
the tin man...
a dog looking over a fence...
and another angel...
Yesterday was Valentine's Day and our 14th anniversary. It was a beautiful day, sunny and very warm, so we spent the day at the beach just soaking up the sun and building another sandcastle.
I woke up around five this morning and went down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Once again, our sandcastle was still standing.
I'll end this blog post with a couple of sunrise photos. I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day. We sure did!
Hi Pam-
ReplyDeleteI'll try again! I had no idea that Galveston had undertaken this effort to transform the dead oak trunks into sculptures. It was sad to see all of those oaks die but this is a creative way to utilize what was left. We'll have to look for them next time we visit Galveston.
Mark
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteYay! I didn't mess it up this time! Thanks for stopping by again. Yes, it was very sad about the oaks. When we were looking for the sculptures, we saw a lot of stumps of the ones that were destroyed but hadn't been sculpted or removed yet. I've been amazed, while visiting Galveston, to hear how bad it was hit by Hurricane Ike. There was very little about that in the national news at the time.
I spent some time on your blog last night. Very nice!
Pam