Morning walks with Seiko

I find myself queued up with 50 fishermen, itching to get to a fishing lake that opens at 6am. Why am I (we) not home sleeping in a warm bed? We started moving ahead on Bass Drive as my Bell-Matic reads 6:02 Rather than have a gatekeeper, for security and safety we had to jump out of our vehicles and line up at the bait store, for a day use permit, boat rental, tackle and/or bait. My wife stood in line while I paced impatiently with the camera. Each guy who went in asked something hopeful, like "But will trout take night crawlers at Cactus Patch Cove?" even after reading the neatly-printed sign placed next to the door...  During the 20-minute admission interlude, I did get a couple nice photos -- the boat rental dock extending out into the invisible water blackness is my favorite. The skies were hinting of pink, purple and blue as we drove around the east side of the lake. The west side has a campground but we are separated from them by fences and signs. A few white pelicans ...

We are having to think hard about where to go -- 75 walks under our feet, and 75 Seikos on our arms. Today we chose Morrison Pond in Bonita, a place we had visited before but we had never circled around it. My wife is doing the honors today, wearing the Seiko moonphase watch I'm holding here. This was once like new but non-working, sitting in my fix-it-someday box. About 3 years ago I revived it for my brother-in-law,  to give to his wife for Christmas. She didn't like it much and didn't wear it often (she's the outdoorsy type, interested in horses and golf). Eventually sister-in-law broke it, and handed it to my wife -- thus it ended up in my fix-it pile, again! It's working fine today as we reached the Open Space Preserve 2 hours before its opening time.  No problem, we parked on the road and hopped the bar. The sky was pretty clear so we did not expect too much drama with the sunrise. It was still very pretty. I enjoyed having the pond as a reflection surface for...