in the dawn's early light

My alarm went off at 4:50 the other day, an hour earlier than normal. Our normal morning gets us together for family prayer at 5:50 before Melanie leaves for school. But this particular day I wanted to do a little hiking before the excessive heat warnings went into effect (not that it helped, it was still excessively hot at 5:30 am).
Nevertheless, I crawled out of bed and found Dave already putting his work boots on to get to a job site to also beat the heat of the day. I started gathering up the girls for prayers. Melanie was already up to start getting ready for school, and I found Rachel sitting at her computer composing some music for her classes, (I'm not actually sure whether she got up early, or stayed up all night). It was strange that we were all up at an hour beginning with the number 4 ! We are not morning people. Seriously not morning people! Especially not me. But this heat just does something to you and by 2:30 in the afternoon, everyone is ready for a siesta. (Or maybe we're ready to sleep because we got up at 4 am!)
When I drove into the parking lot to go hiking, the sun had not yet come up and the parking lot was FULL! I think I took one of the last two spaces in the whole park. It surprises me to think that there is so much activity going on in the world in the pre-dawn hours. Naturally, those are the hours that I prefer to be in bed.
I headed up on the trails and over a hill and enjoyed this sight:Sometimes the views around town are just breathtaking. I think in the end, it was worth starting the day so early.