There are 14 parts to my video journal of our Gustav experiences, so I'm not embedding them all here (as it may cause some peoples' computers to crash.) Instead, here are the links to the YouTube pages they're found on (in order);Sun., Aug. 31stHurricane Gustav Pt I; The evening before landfall.
Mon., Sept. 1stHurricane Gustav Pt II; 7am, landfall in a few hours. Shortly after filming this, a reporter on MSNBC said that hurricane force winds were now hitting New Orleans. Shame on him, however, as hurricane force winds never came within 30 miles of New Orleans.
Tropical storm force winds yes, hurricane force, no. Just goes to show--don't trust what you see on TV, even the news.
Hurricane Gustav Pt III; 8am, power goes out.
Hurricane Gustav Pt IV; 1:30pm, the worst of the storm is over.
We went out for a drive around 5pm & found some trees down;
After sundown it rains
hard for many hours.
Tues., Sept. 2ndHurricane Gustav Pt V; The morning after. The flooding begins.
Hurricane Gustav Pt VI; Flooding worsening.
Hurricane Gustav Pt VII; Our way out of the neighborhood is blocked in every direction.
Hurricane Gustav Pt VIII; The front yard is now flooding. An ATV goes by towing a kid in a canoe.
Hurricane Gustav Pt VIIII; Flooding continues to worsen. About this time a tornado is headed for Abita Springs (although we don't know it--I only found out from concerned local friends after power was restored.) Enlarge the map for a truer representation of scale.
Hurricane Gustav Pt X; Waters still rising.
Tonight I keep dreaming that the air conditioner has come back on. I wake repeatedly to a considerably more miserable reality.
Wed., Sept. 3rdHurricane Gustav Pt XI; The waters start to recede.
Hurricane Gustav Pt XII; The fire department brings us ice. My new, best friend is a ziplock bag of ice (which can be applied in more ways than you'd think.)
Hurricane Gustav Pt XIII; The military brings us MREs.
Many thanks to the fire department & military personnel who came by to check on us & bring us supplies. It was nice to see a friendly face (that wasn't one of our own,) at this point.Thurs., Sept. 4thHurricane Gustav Pt XIV; The waters have largely receded.
For the first time in a long time, we're treated to a lovely sunset;
Our power was restored around 8:15pm.
Many thanks to the tireless power company employees, too, but most of my thanks go to Charles, who was very patient and kind throughout these long, hot days & nights."My Town Monday" is the inspired brilliance of Travis Erwin.
Visit the Sky Watch homepage.
Also, happy 64th birthday to Roger Waters! :)
One of many crab spiders (aka; spiny orbweaver spiders.) These relatively small spiders took a back seat to the plethora of much larger golden silk orb-weaver spiders that we saw throughout our hike. Their bodies (sans legs,) are up to an inch long. Add legs & I DON'T want them on my face, particularly as each one seemed larger than the one before!
Like this one (above,) some of them had missing legs.
They were just everywhere. These are a small sampling of the dozens of pictures I took.
A gulf fritillary.
Thanks to my blogger buddy, Tom for narrowing this flower down to some kind of bidens. It looks much like the tickseed sunflower shown here, but another page said they're not found in Louisiana. I'm grateful to even be in the ballpark, however!
2 shots of the Abita Creek. This was what flooded our entire neighborhood during Hurricane Gustav. I often have a hard time photographing the creek, as the shots end up looking washed out (pardon the pun,) but I like these.
Backlit Spanish moss.
Restoration of longleaf pine savanna. As evidenced by the tree trunks, this whole area was blackened by prescribed fire just this last Spring.
A common wood nymph (aka; satyr) butterfly.
We also saw a few tiny deer tracks & a small pile of animal guts left on the boardwalk (I got a picture of the guts, but thought I'd spare my readers the gore.) I felt much better by the time we got home (where we found 4 crows helping themselves to seed in our backyard.) Now that I've been outside for the first time in a few months (our Gustav experience notwithstanding,) I'm starting to feel human again.
A young girl was very enthusiastic about my bottom painting here, "Inner Child." She told her mother it'd be great in her room. I agreed with her. (Unfortunately it didn't sell during this show, but the middle one did at an unrelated art market in Nov.)
Thanks to Charles for accompanying me to this opening & for being supportive of my art endeavors, in general.
I was intrigued by the colors, textures, shapes & the tiny, green leaf sticking out from all of the apparent lifelessness.
After sundown it rains hard for many hours.
Hurricane Gustav Pt X; Waters still rising.
Our power was restored around 8:15pm.
(Note; I'm still uploading Gustav videos to YouTube & will return to that subject in the next day or so.)
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