Oak Tree Alternatives... Thanks Alot Ike!!!

You know you can't go to a place like Galveston without being totally conscious of something like the devastation of Hurricane Ike which impacted this place more than significantly.  Much less the storm of 1900.  But Ike happened just a few years ago.  And for me it happened just 3 or 4 months after I vacationed in a beach house on the beach Seaside.

One month I was enjoying the beach house, a few months later, the house was gone.

In Galveston this time, we noticed many place markers showing the level of salt water marked on buildings everywhere. 

We were shown in a restaurant right on the seawall, how high the water was right next to our table.  It was about 8 or 9 feet I believe.

This particular restaurant, Fish Tails, was right in front of the great historic Balinese Room on the pier, it was destroyed completely.  Fish Tails opened again about 2 to 3 months later, much quicker than most.

Now let's talk trees, Ike destroyed many palm trees, but everywhere we could tell where palms had been replanted/replaced.  You could tell by the board supports along the bottoms of the new palms.

But the real "eco-disaster" is that 40,000 oak trees died in this town from the salt water deluge from Hurricane Ike.

Before...

After...

In the East side neighborhood of historical homes, the streets were lined with huge, beautiful oak trees.  Following Ike they stood in salt water so long before the water receded that it killed that many of the beautiful oaks.  That being a sad and horrible fact, it is followed by tons and tons of oak wood to be taken away. 

One small part of that removal (80 trees, over a hundred tons of wood) was to be used in the restoration of the world's only remaining wood whaling ship being refurbished in Mystic seaport.  The age and salt water demise of the oaks made it a perfect wood to repair the Morgan, now a floating museum in Mystic.

As it turned out, many wonderful things happened with the tons of oak wood, not one piece went to landfills.  Also many new oak trees have been planted along those historic streets of Galveston.  What a proverbial Phoenix this place is.

Now let's talk about what the people of Galveston did - they made oak stump carvings!

All over the city you will see many, many carvings made from those stumps of the Lost Oaks as they call them.  They are very artistic, beautiful and whimsical.

I took several pics, the first ones you see and one from of friend and then only one of the many I found online.  The pics below are only a small count of the many carvings.  I could not fit them all and I did not see them all while I was there.

Enjoy the amazing Lost Oaks carvings, the turning of lemons to lemonade by the resilient folks of Galveston...

The Tin Man and Toto was in the yard of one of the film directors from the Wizard Of Oz, King Wallis Vidor.

There are way too many to show (many amazing that I do not have in this post) and talk about their history, go online, search to see and read more.  Here is a link to a powerpoint online:  www.guidrynews.com/10June/18110GalvestonTreeCarving.pps

I love history of any kind and this place is chocked full, I could never touch it all.  The things I saw, the stories I heard and the photos of both.  Loved it.

Be Happy People!!!  Make some lemonade!