PINK SATURDAY AND A GALVESTON UPDATE

I've written before about Galveston Island since Hurricane Ike and today I'm going to combine Pink Saturday with another update.

Last Saturday we drove down to Galveston for the 35th Annual Galveston Historic Homes Tour. I wondered if they'd even have it this year, but they didn't let something like a hurricane deter them. The home tour was back and it was better than ever.

I saw plenty of pink on the tour. This is the 1892 Smith Cottage on Ball Avenue. It not only came through Ike OK, it also survived the 1900 hurricane. We wondered how long it took to paint all those shingles.

They don't allow photographs to be taken inside the homes, but the yards looked so pretty with all the new landscaping. The salt water storm surge from Ike killed most of the old landscaping.

I thought this looked pretty with the white picket fence...

This one had some architectural element from a demolished Galveston hotel decorating their landscaping. (There are some light pink flowers in there.)

I really thought this backyard was pretty...

And these people marked how high the water came in their backyard with blue tape...

Look closely...you'll see a little pink along the back fence here.

And someone had a pink bike just like mine! It goes nicely with the pink chair.

Lots of pretty pink blooms...

And this Oleander survived the storm although a lot of others didn't and have already been replaced.

This has no pink, but I liked it! On second thought maybe the cushions on the bench are pink-ish?

And really no pink here either, but don't you think it's neat the way they built the fence around the tree?

Bare with me pink people...no pink here either and this home wasn't even on the home tour. I just thought it would be so much fun to live in an old firehouse and had to take a picture. (I wonder if there's still a pole?)

And this was my favorite home on the tour. I know the picture is a little dark, but I really liked it and could actually picture myself living here. It's the 1904 Youens Home at 1512 Rosenberg. (Again, no pink...sorry.)

And now for the Galveston update. I'm happy to say that things have greatly improved since my last visit. It's now almost 8 months since the storm and things are looking a whole lot better. More and more business are opened. Along the Strand there are now more businesses opened than closed. There are still a lot of homes that appear to be abandoned or repairs have just recently begun.

And we still saw some of this, but not along the main streets any more. This was in some of the back alleys behind the homes.

And this is what I meant about some of the homes being abandoned or repairs just beginning.

And sadly it appears that a lot of the beautiful old trees on the island are dead. There are one hundred year old live oaks that probably won't make it. They're going to wait a while before they start taking them down in hopes some might come back, but it doesn't look too promising. All of the trees in these pictures should be full of leaves.

But there are a lot of things that have returned to normal on the island too.

The Carnival Conquest was getting ready to sail...

Some of the off shore oil rigs were in for repairs...

And one of our favorite eating places was opened again and we were able to eat outside on the dock overlooking the tall ship Elissa.

If you go back and read my earlier Galveston Island post you will see that things have greatly improved in the last eight months. Galveston is coming back!

For more information on Pink Saturday and to see a list of this week's participants click on the Pink Saturday logo on my sidebar. That will take you to Beverly's blog. Thank you Beverly for hosting Pink Saturday.