First Night and First Light

I woke up around 5:30 this morning, which is the time my body is used to waking up everyday.

Made some hot tea and grabbed a banana and came out on the back deck of our condo.

I am too excited and didn’t think that I would be able to go back to sleep with the fantastic view of the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean right outside my door.

Yesterday, we arrived here in St. Augustine around 3pm after a very long twenty-some-odd hours in the minivan. We found the condo with no problems. But we needed to go a few miles down the street to the office to check in. So, after checking in and getting unloaded Kyleigh and I walked down the the beach to see the ocean. The water temperature was a little cool.. Somewhere in the low seventies I would say. She was so excited to see the white sand and feel how soft it was under her bare feet. As we headed back to the boardwalk to come back to the condo and figure out our next move we saw Brandy walking toward us. She joined us on the beach and stepped into the ocean too. There was a dark cloud moving in with some rain and thunder so we quickly headed back to the condo together. As we finished unpacking we decided to make our grocery run to Walmart and come back here to eat some homemade spaghetti.

We picked up a few boogie boards with our groceries and it started raining and storming hard while we were in there. Brandy struck up a conversation with the lady who was checking us out that touched on politics, cost of living and taxes. It was at this point that I first gave a moment of serious thought to moving to this area permanently sometime after our kids graduate. Because Brandy and I had been discussing it in passing almost in a joking manner many times previously.

We had hoped to come back to the condo, eat, and go back and play in the ocean a little before our showers and bed… But, God seem to have other plans for us because it started storming with lots of hard rain and thunder and lighting. Zach was watching the radar on his phone in hopes that it would clear off quickly, allowing us to go back to the Ocean and play for a while  when Brandy made us smile by asking if there was a tornado watch. Zach was previously piddling around the condo when we had all made our brief walk down the boardwalk over the dunes out to the beach. It was only right before we left for Walmart that he ran down to the end of the boardwalk to see the beach up close for himself. He told us that when he came back to the front of the condo by the boardwalk path he noticed there were a great many gecko’s along the way. We spent the rest of the evening evaluating our options for the next weeks activities, making a few plans, getting our showers and heading to bed.

It’s now 6:34 am, my green mint tea is almost gone now and I can see the beautiful red ball we call our sun start to peek out over the surface of the Atlantic. There have only been a few souls out on the beach as I’ve sat here writing this and sipping my tea and my view of the rising sun is shielded a bit by the leafs of a palm tree. I think I’ll eat my banana get my board shorts on and head down to the ocean for a stroll as the wife and kids get a little more sleep.