Thoughts on Rising Early

For most of my life, I've been an early riser, not always by choice. For too many years, I had to go to work at 5:00am, but that was another life . . .

Now that such choices are once again mine, I find I enjoy the early mornings quite a lot.

One of the reasons we picked a Lazy Daze was the many large thermal pane windows. And what a perfect decision that was! I often get up right before sunrise and open up the blinds on the three wrap around windows in the bedroom to enjoy the sunrise. Other mornings I come into the living room, open everything up and enjoy a completely different view. It's one of my favorite times of the day.

Having lived in the mountains under the towering redwoods for thirty plus years, I find I can't quite get enough of the open desert panoramas. I love seeing the sky and the continually changing clouds. For many years, I couldn't imagine living anywhere but in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains, but now I know it's time to broaden my horizons, literally and figuratively.

Since our location usually changes every three to four weeks, I have an ever changing landscape to enjoy. Below is a photo I took this morning of the mountain we currently see outside our window. Even though we were here last year, we totally missed the large outcropping that sits just to the right of center. The only thing we can figure is that it really only shows up well at sunrise. The rest of the day, it pretty much blends in with the surrounding mountain. Like so many of us, it needs the sun to truly shine.

The photo at the top of today's entry is the same mountain in a much wider shot (and remember that you can always click on a photo for a much larger version).



We had a bit of rain last night and with the introduction of water the desert takes on a whole new personality. These mountains are off to our back, and for just a few moments this morning, these clouds hovered kind of like the Mothership in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I liked it so much I took a picture.



Many people have asked how we like being on vacation all the time. What we've found is that the mindset of the life we're living is so different from vacation, in many ways it's difficult to explain. We are rarely pressed for a time (a hallmark of many of our past vacations) and we find the freedom to choose every day exhilarating. It's an amazing experience and one we try to embrace fully.

Life is good