We left New Orleans and drove all day across Louisiana to the eastern edge of Texas. We thought that we would go to Houston and then visit Lonnie and Chris, but we discovered that Lonnie and Chris are camped east of Houston. So we stopped to visit with them first.
We parked in an RV park near where Gilchrist, Texas used to be. The camp manager (I can’t recall his name so I’ll call him Bob) told us about about the Gilchrist; three years ago Hurricane Ivan roared through here and changed everything. About 99% of the buildings were knocked off their foundations; Bob’s home simply disappeared - not a single trace left, just the pilings. He and his wife had spent Thursday helping the last of their campers hook up and leave, and Bob wanted to leave on Friday because he was tired. But his wife had everything packed and wanted to leave right away, so they did. Good thing - a few hours after they left, the 10-foot surf hit. Bob told me about their neighbor who stayed during a previous hurricane and swore she’d never to that again, but when level 2 Ike came in she either decided to stay or decided to leave too late; a couple weeks later they found her and her trailer miles away. It is very easy for me to wonder why anyone would stay, but that was before I heard the stories about looting. Right after the hurricane passed, hundreds of people swarmed in to grab anything they could. I decided not to post the stories he told us - all of them are depressing and some are horrible. But he summed it up when he said that they had a disaster, but looters made it a catastrophe. And now I can understand better that when people know they will loose everything they own if they evacuate, they will try to evaluate how big the storm risk really is. Perhaps a level 2 hurricane just didn’t sound that bad; whatever the reason, over 300 people in this area made the wrong choice. And the town will probably never recover.
Enough bad stuff; we are doing our best to bolster their economy by spending some money here. The RV park isn’t up to full service yet but they do offer full hookups and nice people, plus it’s just across the road from the beach. The water is too cold to get in but it is so relaxing to walk along the beach. Today Lonnie took us to High Island Beach so I could find some shells. If I keep finding shells, we may need to get a bigger RV! But I can NOT turn them down.
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