I love that first bit of light in the morning. We have a path along the edge of our town that used to be a railroad track. They took out the rails, planted the ties upright in the center and created a paved bike/walking/skating path on one side with a horse/dog or whatever-you-wanted-to-run-with dirt lane on the other side. It starts at the city border and runs a mile and a half or so to the park at our end. I used to get out early enough to walk eastward on it and see the sun working its way up through the craggy ridges of mountains that ring the greater L.A. basin.

We live in the foothills at the base of those. It's dry scrub vegetation for the most part, broad sanding riverbeds that only have water after storms. The area is quite arid but for the imported water that feeds all those lawns and palm trees you see in the pictures. Actually, our valley area is hilly with many old residential sections, and many, many tree-lined streets. When the air is clear there are great panoramas I can see as I drive around the edges, here and there. And coming back home I get to have the mountains to the north as my view. In winter we’ll even get snow on the peaks down to about 3,000 ft.