Galveston: West End

I drove down to Galveston today to bring Ariel and Robert some of their mail that has been delivered to our house. I chatted with Robert for a while to catch up on what they have been doing all week. Ariel was out with a friend going through their storage facility to see if anything was salvagable after the flooding. They both got jobs working with construction companies. There is a huge need for workers to gut and rebuild houses and businesses. It's kind of weird to hear about them working normal hours.

After I left there, I drove down to the west end of Galveston Island to check out a few houses that our friends built. That end of the island is pretty much at sea level and suffered a lot. They just opened it up to the public yesterday. They also changed the city curfew from 8pm to midnight. That's exciting because that means Ariel and Robert can come over for dinner now without having to rush home.

Anyways, the west end is a mess. I went down to the beach where Travis proposed to me and all the houses there are gone. All of our friends' houses are still there and look pretty good. What was strange was all the dune-like piles of sand lining the main road. It looks like Ike brought in a bunch of sand with the waves and flooding that had to be pushed aside by plows. There were huge piles everywhere. They other amazing thing I noticed was the gigantic pile of trash forming on the island. I guess they have a centralized location for all the trash that's constantly being picked up. It is HUGE. Taller than the telephone poles, for sure.

It seems like everything has to get worse before it can get better. It was bad after the storm. But now that everyone is gutting their houses and businesses, it looks much worse. I can't wait for it to get better.