Sunrise at The Shoppes

Getting up at Stupid O'Clock has it's own set of ups and downs.

You get to see your own town at a completely different light, completely different circumstances.

Those flowers that look so cheery in the sunlight fade to darkness in the orange glow of the street lamps.

The people creeping along in their cars could be anything.  Newspaper Deliveries are the most likely here.  The usual route of the police cruiser patrolling the area. Don't forget to wave hi, they know you anyway.  The leftover "vampires" from the night before.  Creatures of the night.  You never really know.

Fast forward to just before sunrise.  More people are up.  The city begins to sputter to life. 

People are getting in their cars to begin the morning commute.  The bakery has put out the morning cookies, cakes, and other baked goods for you to break your fast on.  Some of the shops are even opening and the overnight cleanup has just about finished.

It's a more pleasant and decidedly less creepy time of the day.  While I'm up at 5AM as habit, I have to say this one particular morning that I managed to sleep in was a rather beautiful one.

I saw my neighbor and her dog.  A big husky dog yodeled his "WoooooWooo!" at me as he got shushed.  The old dog barks because he can.  I find out that my neighbor and her husband are moving away as he found his life taking him to a city up the coast.  We will miss them, they were very nice people.

But as we were getting caught up on our lives and their divergent paths, she stopped me and gushed about the sunrise.  We both stood in front of my house, looking down the street toward the ocean, two miles away.  The sun hadn't quite come up over the tree line, but the back lit and under lit thunderstorms that march their way North up the coast every morning looked dramatically beautiful as they lumbered past.

"You have got to see the view of the sunrise from The Drive!". 

As it was, it looked like someone stuffed some cotton candy in the skies.   But she was right.  My bubbly friend told me to go up to The Shoppes on Wilton Drive and watch from there.

It was still a few minutes to Sunrise.  I made it there at the right time for a change.

Standing in the expanse of the littered tarmac, I turned East, toward the sun and still didn't see it.

It turns out I was at just the right spot.  The light perked through the trees and came up over the Italian American Club's roof.  In a gap between two trees there was a jewel, the sun.

Lighting the clouds up from the bottom, it turned them into gold. 

Just a bright start to the day for a change.  No vampires or creatures of the night.  I will be missing my friends, but I did thank her for the time we had together and the reminder of the show.