I love watching a sunrise. Paratrooper Man and I grew up together in Florida. As a young woman, I lived in Clearwater and worked in Tampa. This meant I crossed Tampa Bay on the Howard Frankland Bridge every day on my morning commute. Or the Howard Frankenstein Bridge, as most of the locals called it due to the horrible traffic. Although major traffic jams were a common occurence, there is something else I recall about this commute across the bay. The sunrises.

My morning drive back then often coincided with the rising of the sun. And I was often treated to a glorious sunrise across the Florida waters. The beauty of the sunrise made the traffic jams a bit more tolerable.

We moved away from Florida some fifteen years ago. It had been years since I watched the sun rise across the water. I had almost forgotten about all those postcard perfect sunrises. And then we visited the beach at Port Aransas in Texas.

Don't you just hate it when you go on vacation and you can sleep in late, but your internal clock wakes you up bright and early? Or more accurately, your bladder wakes you up at o-dark-thirty.

What a dilemna. Should we crawl back under the cozy covers of the bed? Or should we put on a pot of coffee and head to the beach while it was still dark? We chose the latter. And I'm so glad that we did. Otherwise, we would have missed this.

It would be a shame for this heron to be the only one to witness this breathtaking sunrise, don't you think? Indeed, he seems pleased to have some company this morning.

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