My Early Morning with Abe

Back in January I posted a DC 'to do' list for the year.

This morning I had a very DC experience that wasn't on my list, but was a must do for one of my friends. She's moving back to Philly next weekend and one of the things on her bucket list was sunrise from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Now it's well established that I'm NOT a morning person, but, I am always willing to help a friend in need and, going hand in hand here, not willing to send a friend out to sit out on the National Mall in the middle of the night alone.

(Yes, sunrise is my equivalent of the middle of the night. Especially since the published sunrise time, the one they tell you on the news or when you look at the weather report is very, very misleading. You see, that's the time you actually see the sun break the horizon, but by that point it's already been light out for easily 30 minutes!)

I digress. So my friend really wanted to do this and I agreed to tag along on the early morning adventure. We did some research on weather, timing, parking and decided that today was our day.

This morning when we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 5:40 am it looked like this:

That's the moon over to the right. Sigh...

But, it didn't look like that for long, as we timed things just right. Soon the sky started to turn shades of pink and orange, slowly changing to blue, lighting up the sky.

Abe gets his first view of the sun, at 6:25 am

So pretty.

Of course now, at 7 pm I'm so struggling to keep my eyes open, but really, the early morning views, on a gorgeous spring day, in the company of a good friend was more than worth the missed sleep!