Hurricane Ike

I live in east Texas, and although I am over 150 miles from the coast, our city has had lots to deal with. But first let me say from the start that we in no way are experiencing the terrible tragic loss that the people of Crystal Beach and the rest of Bolivar Peninsula as well as Galveston are experiencing. There are so many people here in our city that have beach cabins and houses on Crystal Beach. They have shared these second homes with so many of us either as guests or allowing us to rent them for a vacation. Almost all of the houses at Crystal Beach are totally demolished. Galveston has had major loss although I don't think that it was hit quite as hard. My heart goes out to all of these that lost so much by this devastating hurricane. Our prayers are with you all.

Here in our city, we have had trees down, power gone, shortage of gasoline, and minimal grocery supplies. But.... we here in this east Texas town have so much to be thankful for:
1. As far as I know, no loss of life due to Ike.
2. Many people here now have their power.
3. The weather was unusually cool this time of year which made it nice with no AC.
4. People are pitching in- neighbor helping neighbor to remove trees, limbs, etc.
5. Our phones have been working.
6. We had time to prepare and get water, generators, gasoline, food, etc.
7. We had facilities to house evacuees and people to help.
8. The "lovebugs" diminished for a few days (they are back now).
9. This storm was not as bad as Rita for our community.

And on a personal note, I got to spend extra time with my sister because she was stranded here. I will post more on that later. I had no damage to my house or shed by any big trees. When Rita hit, I lost several one hundred year old oak trees. This time I only lost some of their limbs and one small oak tree. I still have lots of clean up. But I thank God that my family and my friends all managed okay through this storm.