Since the weather guy is forecasting snow for Sunday morning Tricia and I decided to go check out the cherry blossoms today. It was a bit chilly but bright and sunny. I am ashamed to admit that I've never seen the cherry blossoms from the DC side of the Potomac River.
Me!
Tricia
Today was the first day of the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival and despite the fact the blooms were not yet at their peak it was pretty busy down on the National Mall. However, the parking gods smiled on us and we found a spot right near the Jefferson Memorial.
As you may know the annual festival commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the City of Washington, DC from the Mayor of Tokyo as a sign of the enduring friendship between Japan and the United States. Which has a slightly different meaning this year given the devastation Japan is currently suffering.
This was also my first time to visit the Jefferson Memorial. It has one of the best views of the cherry trees along the tidal basin. There were too many people to get a good look at the new visitor center exhibits. Guess I'll just have to go back later at check them out.
Below is a slide show of the best of the pictures I took today. Enjoy! Chincoteague Island is up next weekend.
Rather than have several photos in the body of the text of the post I'm trying a stacking photo gallery option, which will allow me to include more photos without creating massively long posts. Let us see if this will work properly.
These are pictures I took today. Tricia and I had our planning meeting at a lovely laid back cafe named St. Elmo's in Del Ray, VA this morning. We decided where we are going to explore and take pictures for the next two months. You'll see several of the upcoming events in the top right side of this blog. Don't mind the movie premiere dates - we just wanted to plan around the summer movie blockbusters. ;)
These trees where next to the parking lot and a clear indication that springs is coming to DC. I'm not sure what type of trees these were, not crab apple maybe cherry. The wind was blowing pretty good so it was difficult to zoom in and focus on the buds but some managed to stay in focus.
Let me know what you think of the gallery format. Do you like seeing the photos on a slide show or in amongst the words?
