Thanksgoating - Day seven. Mornin' sunshine
12I wake up every morning with a smile because I wake up every morning and can smile.
I typically wake up around 3AM and toss and turn for a while and roll out of bed sometime after 4:00. I’m a morning person. Some people are. Some aren’t. All good. I used to stay up til 4:00, now I get up at 4:00 
The problem is when I wake up, my brain says, ‘Ok… it’s go time!’ So… I’ve learned not to argue with it and get the day started.
Today, I am thankful for sunrises.
Some people are sunset folks. Me… I’m a sunrise guy. I’d like to think I have modestly high appreciation for the beauty in nature. I’m a computer guy, I’m a geek, I spend most of my day working with tech. Getting away from all that makes for a reasonable balance. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not looking for a 300 mile trek on the Appalachian Trail. I’m more of a sit, exhale and enjoy kind of guy.
Which is why I like sunrises. You can just relax and wait and appreciate it as it grows. And that’s why we have come back to this island so many times. The sunrises over Oyster bay are incredible. Even my wife, who is certainly NOT a morning person, gets up early to appreciate them.
It’s always nice to start your day with a work of art that feels like it was made just for you.
Happy Monday, all. I’m still on vacation!
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This is one of my favorites from a previous trip.
ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!!
Most definitely a wonderful way to start the day, thank you for sharing!
Enjoy the rest of your vacation!
Being a goat seems like a lot of work. Nice sunrise(s). Nice sentiments. Thanks.
Beautiful pics. I’m more of a sunset person. My dads house (where I grew up) is directly across the lake from where the sun sets and gets some really beautiful sunsets.
I am a big fan of sunrises, too. This one was taken from our rear deck a while back (unfortunately, this morning’s view is a thick wall of fog).
@macromeh That’s fantastic. What is the peak in the distance?
@capnjb That is Mt. Hood. This view is actually looking from NW Oregon, across the Columbia River, an intervening patch of Washington state, then across the Columbia River again back to Oregon.
@macromeh Since you can see Mt. Hood, please take a photo when it finally blows its stack and post. Then run for the hills. Oh wait. You might already be IN the hills. Seriously though if it ever does erupt you’d have a lovely and hopefully relatively safe view.
@Kidsandliz I was here during the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980 and it wasn’t really what I’d call pretty. While the worst of the initial blow went in the opposite direction, the smoke and ash were a real PITA for months afterward. So, not really something I’d look forward to.
BTW, I can see the very top of Mt. St. Helens from my property, too, but not from my deck and the view isn’t as nice as Mt. Hood.
@Kidsandliz @macromeh Awesome! I actually have a jar of ash from that eruption. It covered the whole state. My grandmother (who was born in 1895 and was one of the first college educated women in WA, and rode a horse to the one room schoolhouse she taught in… good grief, how did I land here) collected it. Too many words keep coming out of my face.
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!
@capnjb @Kidsandliz I likely have a small collection of Mt. St. Helens ash too, but it’s deep in my lungs where I can’t admire it.
@Kidsandliz @macromeh I know a surgeon who can help with that.
@capnjb @Kidsandliz @macromeh I use to have a baby jar of ash, somehow one of my grandmas got a hold of it and gave it to me. I thought it was the coolest thing. Somehow it was misplaced during a move, I think my mom decided it didnt need to be packed
@macromeh I know Mt. Hood
And the Columbia. My dad grew up in a small town in Eastern Washington (Pomeroy). Went to UoW and met my mom there. As a wedding present my grandfather gave them a large tract of land near that area and they started a small real estate company and on weekends would drive across the state and mark off property lines to sell lots for people to build on. One day they were passing an old familiar wooden sign that was being torn down to be replaced with a modern one. My dad pleaded to be able to have it before they burned it. He left and built an outrigger for his Alfa Romeo Spider (he was an architect and set designer) and was able to take the 17’ boards back to Seattle. When we moved to Maryland the house he bought didn’t have any walls that were 17’ long continuous. So he moved the back of the house out 12’ so he could have this conversation piece. That’s my dad. 
This is well over 100 years old. I love it!
@capnjb That is FANTASTIC!
I love that so much!
@Kyeh Yeah… a bit is obscured, but it reads 'You are now entering Garfield county over the old historic route traversed bt the great explorers Lewis and Clark on their return from the mouth of the Columbia, May 4th, 1806.
The really neat thing is the little town my dad grew up in is nestled inbetween Lewiston and Clarkston.
@capnjb No wonder he wanted it. But to incorporate it into his house is just so marvelous. I love old hand-painted signs with their antique fonts.
@Kyeh Yeah. My dad is 91 and I’m kind of dealing with that. I am the custodian of the estate and that kind of makes me uncomfortable. But it is what it is. My dad did tell me if I ever sold the house I needed to get the sign to a museum in Eastern Washington. I’m not giving up that sign
I’m going to tell my daughter the same thing. Hope this stays in the family for generations.
@capnjb
Terrific! It certainly is a treasure.
Not on the water, but a beautiful sunset to share nonetheless
@tinamarie1974 Love the colors!
Your vacation sites, pictures, and sentiments are wonderful. My only complaint is that you keep rubbing it in to the rest of us.
But I can tolerate it, so keep doing it.
@phendrick You can blame me for that.
@phendrick And for what it’s worth, this position didn’t come with an instruction manual!
I’m winging it.
@capnjb @phendrick …hmmm… winging it…
/image flying goat
@capnjb @phendrick
/giphy flying goat
@capnjb @phendrick OK so not what I expected but since it is saying meh I won’t try again.
I like a good sunrise, but why do they always have to happen so early in the morning?
So since you get up so early, did you see that lunar eclipse today? I saw the beginning of it because I hadn’t gone to bed yet. (Rocky Mtn. Time.) But want willing to stay up to see the rest of it.
@Kyeh I didn’t. I was up, but it was windy as heck. I had my big boy camera ready to go, but I would have had to wake up my wife and daughter. We were up super early for the Antares rocket launch from Wallops Island the morning before (only 11 miles away… and AWESOM3!). Had I woken them up I would have gotten ‘Why are you waking me up so early?’. And had I taken pictures I would have gotten ‘Why didn’t you wake us up?’. It was lose/lose. So I put my feet up and worked on Day 8 goat stuff
@capnjb
Sounds like a wise decision.
Rocket launch! Did you get pictures of that?
@Kyeh I took some video and my wife tried to get some photos. It was kind of overcast, so imagine trying to take pictures in pitch black and a dense fog of something that was 11 miles away. That’s kind of what we ended up with. But we were there in the moment… it was like a 3 minute clap of thunder and when the rocket was briefly visible to our bare eyes it was exhilarating. Very cool and completely worth getting up before 5am on vacation. We had a laptop out on the deck with a live feed from Wallops Island so we had a good play by play for the launch as we watched it rise across the horizon.
@capnjb Oh wow! Exciting!
@Kyeh This was a shot of the booster rocket coming back down. We got kind of a pre-sunrise, sunrise.
But again, you can see the level of detail you can capture in the dark at a distance. It’s not great 
@capnjb Still pretty neat!
@Kyeh I still have a bunch of media to go through and if I find something better from the launch I’ll share it.
@Kyeh Here is the video I grabbed. It’s more audio than anything. Turn it up in both ears and your head will rumble
We were watching the live broadcast from Wallops and it was about 10 seconds behind what was actually happening. But it eventually gets drowned out by the rocket engines… those took a bit to get to us since we were 11 miles away, but boy did they shake the house. I’m bummed that there was so much cloud cover, but the rocket peeked through every now and again. Amazing to be there 
@capnjb SO cool! Did you plan to be there at the same time, or was it a lucky coincidence?
@Kyeh It was pure happenstance. We’ve been on the island before when there have been smaller rocket launches. You’d hear a low rumble at the beach and wonder what it was. This was the first big rocket launch we’ve been on the island for and it was much more than a low rumble
There is always something cool coming out of the NASA flight center. Occasionally there would be early morning low altitude test flights over our house in an old Beech 18. And by low altitude I mean just over the trees low. 
@capnjb Whoa!
@capnjb @Kyeh That reminds me of once when I was crew on the Susan Constance (Jamestown Foundation in VA) and we were coming down the James River right by the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Two planes from one of the 13 bases around there (Navy Base? Air Force Base?) flew UNDER the James River Bridge. Sent about 5 million sea gulls into flight. We all presumed that stunt was not one that was part of whatever it was they were supposed to be doing that morning at 6am.
@capnjb @Kyeh Can’t have those vacationers sleeping all day, now can we?
Took this looking East during the lunar eclipse on Tuesday
@chienfou Gorgeous!