I hate waking up early, and I definitely do not do it naturally. My friends say I am a morning person because they know I wake up to do weekday morning workouts before work, and they also know that when traveling, Chris and I wake up early to start our days as soon as possible. But that doesn’t mean I’m naturally a morning person; it just means I have realized that waking up early means I am maximizing daylight hours, and when traveling, I want as much daylight as possible to soak in the day and the place that I am temporarily in.

From a hiker and photographer’s perspective, early morning is the best time to be out: the parking lots at national parks and trails will be fairly empty, the crowds thus will be lesser, the temperature will be lower (more important in hot climates like Arizona), and the light will be best for photographs because of its softness and the position of the sun. The sun’s light creeping up in the morning here brushes against the tops of mountains, creating an illuminating orangish-red hue that you will never, ever get if you take the exact same photo just an hour later or in the afternoon. Sunset is good, too, but that burning color won’t be there the same way. And who wants to be stuck on top of a mountain after dark when you climb down once finished with taking your epic photos?

We didn’t get to Lake Moraine until 7:30 this morning (that’s later than we wanted, because again, I’m not a morning person and struggled to get up), so the orange hues I wanted to see were gone. We only got them during the drive to the park when seeing the mountains we approached. But one thing we did get to enjoy was the absolute stillness of the lake. Every reflection of the mountain, the logs, the clouds, and the trees could be seen, and it was so stunning. I’m a little obsessed with water reflections; I can’t explain why. I just think natural water is amazing, and when the clouds or the mountains are reflected off of it, it’s gorgeous — natural beauty in its quietest moment. The lakes will only be still early in the morning and later in the evening around sunset, so it’s another reason to get up early to enjoy this still moment. We’ll be chasing a lot of reflections on this trip — we won’t be here long, so we need to soak it all in.