IKE

Don't really know what to say...

The folk at wikipedia had this to say about the third most destructive hurricane to make landfall in the continental US: (full article here)

On the morning of September 13, 2008, the eye of Hurricane Ike approached the upper Texas coast, making landfall at 2:10 a.m. CDT over the east end of Galveston Island, with a high storm surge, and travelled north up Galveston Bay, along the east side of Houston. People in low-lying areas who had not heeded evacuation orders, in single-family one- or two-story homes, were warned by the weather service that they may "face certain death" from the overnight storm surge, a statement that unfortunately turned out to be true for some who refused to evacuate.
In regional Texas towns, electrical power began failing on Sept. 12 before 8 p.m. CDT, leaving millions without power (estimates range from 2.8 million to 4.5 million customers). Grocery store shelves in the Houston area were left empty for weeks in the aftermath of the storm.

The Houston Chronicle also has good coverage of the hurricane aftermath

George and I were stranded in Canada as the airport was closed in Houston for a few days, but our place survived and all our friends were unharmed thank god.

I see no need to post photos of everyone's tragedy here, but here's few that caught my eye...

The heavy rains that came withIke changed the usually busy I-10 fwy near our house to this.
And Buffalo Bayou by our place rose to the top of it's banks - a good 30ft

Places with cool names... Banff

We'd barely landed in Houston (still only had a sofa we'd bought off a friend, a TV someone gave us and a plastic fold out table from Home Depot... yep matress still on the floor... classy) and we were off to Canada for a conference. Run, by a local Alberta company, the boys new exactly where to have it - the Fairmont Banff Springs!! Look at this place... it's disneyland meets switzerland... thank go we weren't paying for it.

Anyway, once the conference was over we took a long weekend to drive from Banff through the Icefields Parkway to Jasper and back.

As you can probably tell, it's freekin' cold in that part of the world, and coming from Nigeria where there's only two seasons: HOT and HOT & WET, we weren't quite ready for so much nature...


Thanks to Ryan and Desi, we managed to borrow a bunch of thermals, puffy jackets, gloves and tuks (beanies) which saved us from freezing to death.

Our trusty Dodge Caravan - the mummy wagon of choice for discerning campers
There were tiny squirrels (much smaller than the ones that dig up my garden back in houston) everywhere. This little fella was happy to sit around and eat wild berries while we took pictures..
The Glacial lakes (this one's Peyto lake) are full of sediment and so have this amazing aquamarine colour.
It actually felt quite alien being up in the mountains after three years living in the tropics. We'd got used to jungle plants and stifling humidity, yet here it was so cold and dry our lips cracked immediatly and I had to use a heater instead of AC for the first time in years!!
Along the highway is the Athabascar Glacier where you can travel up on to the glacier on these huge ice buggies and look at the clomubia icefields...
This is the Athabasca Glacier, in the old days (mid 1800's) it would've covered me where I stood taking this photos, now it's a good kilmetre shorter...
For good reason, they don't really want you to walk on the glacier by yourself
These huge 6 wheel drive buggies (specially made for ice travel apparently) carry hundreds of people up on to the glacier. It was the first time either of us had been on a glacier, so we just had to do it...
it was freezing...
We had a couple of days, so we headed up to Jasper, a small mountain town at the far end of the icefields parkway. Whilst it was still a little touristy (mainly for skiing and hiking) it was a hell of a lot better than Banff - which had a kinda fake northpole elf village vibe going on (complete with sushi restraunts for the japanese tourists staffed by aussies waiting for the ski season to start)
our neigbour in Japser one morning...
Being further away from the hype of Banff and Lake Louise, the trails around Jasper are practically empty and you can enjoy awesome hikes in the surrounding mountains. We spent some time near Mt Edith cavell at the Angel glacier...
There was a small lake caused by the toe morraine holding the melt water from the retreating glacier which was full of these really cool mini icebergs. It's so cold here that huge lumps of ice are scattered all over the place...
Angel glacier

When the glacial chunks of ice melt during the day, they create quite amazing shapes...