Breaking Dawn

One of the items on Nosheen's bucket list was to watch the sunset from the top of Humpback Rocks. I say "was" because she can now cross that item off of her list. We left at 4:30 this morning to get to the top of the mountain in time to see the sun crest over the Appalachian Mountains.

Usually the hike takes 30-40 minutes, but I budgeted extra time because I thought the ascent would be much slower in the dark. I was wrong: our lack of vision for some reason forced us to go faster, and we made it to the top in 20 minutes flat. It was the quickest, darkest ascent of Humpback Rocks I've ever done.

We actually arrived at the top of the mountain a good hour before sunrise, but it was nice because we got to do some stargazing before the sky started changing colors. And when it did, oh what a sight!

Just as the sun was about to come up, another group of hikers joined us at the summit. In that group was a set of identical twins, the likes of which I'd never met before. I've never seen anyone so chipper and energetic, let alone at 6:30 in the morning. They didn't even stop chatting while taking group pictures for us. If I'm hypomanic, then these girls were experiencing full-blown mania.

On the way back from our Humpback Rocks hike, we stopped at Bodo's for breakfast, officially making this the most Charlottesvillian morning of all time.