Southern New England Outdoor and Nature Site: Cherry Blossoms

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Cherry Blossoms

Cherry Blossom in Japanese

Two years ago, Laurie and I took a trip to see the famous Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC. We spent almost a week around DC going to the cherry trees in the morning and museums in the afternoon. For the last two years, I have wanted to go back. Since Laurie basically worked her ass off for the past year, when she suggested we go again so she could get away, who was I to say no?

This trip was much shorter than the last. We left when she got out of work on Wednesday night and we came home Sunday. This only gave us Thursday through Saturday. To shorten our time even more, the weather forecast for Thursday was cloudy with possible showers and Saturday was going to be windy. Friday was the winner of our three days.

We stayed at the Greenbelt Campground twenty miles outside of DC in Maryland. The cost is only $20/night. To put that into perspective, The Hotel Harrington, the motel we used to stay at when we first went to DC cost $185/night. We have probably been to DC many more times just because we found this campground.

The sky was epic on Thursday evening

It turned out the weather wasn't so bad. While it was rainy on Thursday morning it cleared up during the day. We went to Arlington National Cemetery when we got to Washington around noon time. While it was cloudy most of the day when it got near sunset the light was beautiful and the sun put a glow on the trees and monuments. Friday was a great day but it did get chilly in the evening when we wanted to spend time at the monuments at night. Saturday we went to Antietam National Battlefield. It did rain in the afternoon mostly on our drive back to the campground but the campground was dry and we made supper before bed.

The objective of the trip was to see the cherry blossoms in bloom. Starting in February you can follow along with a website that predicts when the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom. Because of the really warm winter and the warm spring in the nation's capitol the blossoms were in full bloom on March 17. This is one of the earliest years on record. Laurie follows the cherry blossom bloom report. I can not because it would give me an ulcer. It is a helpless feeling knowing your reservations are a full ten days after the cherry blossoms have reached a peak. So, I tried not to think about it. It would have driven me mad.

Luckily, after the blossoms reached full bloom, it got pretty chilly in DC. The cooler weather kept the blossoms from leafing out quickly. While, I could tell many of the trees were past peak there were enough flowers still in full bloom to be beautiful. Someday I would very much like to hit it right and get down to DC when the blossoms just reach full bloom but considering what I could have seen had they had a couple eighty degree days, I got pretty lucky.

I wanted to photograph the trees and get awesome photos of the cherry blossoms and the monuments. I hoped to use what I had learned last time and get some great photos. This I accomplished. Because of the intense light on Thursday evening, I got some really dramatic shots. I used both my camera and my phone camera. It amazes me how different the photos can be.

To make matters interesting I broke my camera last year so I have been using my old camera. I didn't throw it away when I got my new one (luckily). However, it is two models older than the one I had broke. The buttons aren't the same. Also, I learned how to use all the functions on a camera on the one I broke. With this camera, I still haven't figured out how to choose some of the settings. So it was a challenge to take photos that I wanted. However, it also made it part of the fun. I worked a vantage point taking multiple photos. While it would have taken me seconds to change my settings on the camera that broke, with this camera, I had to work at it to figure out what I wanted.

Below is basically a photo dump of photos that I liked. While I manipulated the settings on my camera for more/less light, different aperture, flash, and white balance, I didn't do anything to the finished product unless otherwise noted. I didn't add filters in post editing or change the saturation, brightness, etc...