It Was a Beautiful Sunrise....BUT:

I started out early...way early, before sunrise. By the time I got to North Padre Island the horizon was pink with the sun behind the clouds. "It's gonna be a beautiful day! The sunrise will be the beginning of a perfect setting." I pulled off the highway and rolled down my window to view the glory in silence of an awakening morning on the island!!

My rapture was quickly broken when I reached Port Aransas tho!  Recently I noticed on the website for birders, where they have sightings of birds in my area, that a 'hot spot' in Port Aransas had some birds seen over the weekend!! I thought, "it must be back open to enter"!! I had to see if that was true. Well, partially true. Yes, the fallen trees as you enter had been cleared out...and there were three volunteers working in the flower gardens. I asked if the area was once again accessible and the reply was "As far as you can go....the boardwalk is no longer there!" I continued on the path, and stopped in disbelief when I hit the 'end of the trail'.

On this blog, I couldn't find too many good before Harvey photos, but this is what I came up with in my label search. The recent photos are watermarked with my bird blog copyright. My mistake; I forgot to change it when uploading for this post:

BEFORE:




AFTER:


Volunteer Workers

The boardwalk remnants, a downed Palm tree, the Observation tower and what is left of the extended boardwalk...

What was once a picnic area with tall willow trees and marsh land - the boardwalk view



Cormorants on the boardwalk uprights way out...and, the reed grasses; dead and flat!!

- - -

...then, just down the road is another birding paradise...in fact it's called Paradise Pond.  Once, a beautiful, lush, green and vibrant oasis for migrant birds  ---

BEFORE





...now, a wasteland of 'death' all around:


AFTER


Once a large Willow tree that housed a woodpecker nest yearly...broken!

My emotions had me feeling as if I was walking through a Science Fiction movie set...blue, despaired and completely agonized.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I watched the sun rise over the Gulf beach...I will share its awesomeness in a later post!! I took several photos and this post is heavily loaded with a lot of loading time already.