For years, I'd stay up all night and sleep through the sunrises not waking until the sun was at a high noon. It wasn't until back in college when we started doing road trips through the night that I started to appreciate the sunrise. I've always had trouble sleeping, so staying up all night was never a problem; I always went to bed as the moon began to set. Driving all night - be it around Lake Michigan for no reason at all, from Michigan to Seattle (a few nights), or anywhere else we went - allowed me to be awake for the sunrise.
I can remember back to sometime my sophomore year of college, or so, that we did a winter road trip circumnavigating Lake Michigan. We left Grand Rapids, MI and headed south towards Chicago and up through Milwaukee. The best part, on each occasion this trip happened, was Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Up there, I remember seeing the best sunrises. We did the trip three different years, but the first trip was when I realized I'd forever be a sunrise guy. Below are three photos of the frigid winter sunrise from Michigan's Upper Peninsula from the early 2000s.