I used to walk my Labrador here when she was still able to walk and after Emma died I was reluctant to return, but as they say, time heals all wounds, and riding a Bonneville helps. The colors of the sunrise were spectacular enough my little point-and-shoot Nikon managed to capture them in rare style.
Luckily I'm fairly immune to mosquitoes because they descended on me en masse and settled like a large buzzing halo around my head, the only part of me exposed to the air. When I arrived it was dark, around 6am, and the fence lights at the end of the military runway were blinking bright red almost outshining the moon.
Boca Chica Road has been a dead end for decades but the roadway got ravaged by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and the county, in their wisdom threw up a barrier and cut off the last mile or so of beach road. So now the chunk of roadway available for vehicle parking is a tiny portion of what it once was. However the pedestrian gap in the barricade up by the trees, is still wide enough for a motorcycle to pass through. And I was astonished by the amount of grasses and creepers that had grown over the unused paved road in less than three years.
When Emma and I used to come down here to go for a little Labrador stump the roadway was lined with bushes and trees all the way along the water front. Wilma put paid to them all when the storm pushed sand and water over the road spilling on military property inland of the road. However, by riding the Bonneville past the tree line, through the barricade I got a crisp dawn profile of the motorbike. 
As far as mossies go I'm lucky because even after they dig into me I never show a welt and the sting goes away just a few minutes later. Even so they were incredible. They landed all over my mesh and Kevlar jacket, and even with my leather gloves on they crawled over my hands desperately seeking blood. I should have dug out my repellent from my saddlebag but I wasn't planning on hanging around... and they took horrible advantage of me.
And slowly the sun came up, highlighting the dew on the windshield and the incredible, summer-like stillness of the waters. I was entranced, despite the abundant insect life.
We're supposed to get a cold front again this week, possibly by Wednesday with temperatures plunging back into the 60s they tell us, but at the moment we have the pre-frontal heat and humidity and the big puffy thunderclouds hanging over the Gulf Stream add to the summer-like ambiance. Ambiance or no, the sun was coming up and vampire-like I had to get home to my coffin, er bed. Night shift works like that and I was getting seriously sleepy as the day brightened.
I took a quick stop at Geiger Creek, a saltwater "river" which is usually home to a bunch of bridge anglers, but not at that hour. The mosquito population here was minimal. An enormous relief.
And so it was that about 40 minutes later than usual, tardiness possible thanks to my wife being out of town, I started out for home. First I had to make my way back to Highway One through Tamarac Park, a subdivison of stilt homes set among numerous trailers on canal front lots. In the distance I could see low lying mist which I thought very evocative:
Highway One was busier than I am used to on my trip home in the morning, as by now it was nearly seven am and the daytime workers were massing on the Highway into Key West. Lots of people commute as I do (in cars) from as far afield as Big Pine Key around Mile Marker 30, sometimes to pay less rent or get a larger home on a more spacious lot. Others like the relative peace and quiet and many like the easy access to the water in the Lower Keys, thanks to the many homes built on canals. But they sure do clog the roadway between seven and eight in the morning. 
Tired as I was I had to stop for a moment on Cudjoe Key and attempt to capture the rising orb that had stayed coyly out of sight on Boca Chica Beach. I can only say it looked way better in real life. 