It is a great year for the cherry blossoms. Nice and early as winter that was actually very nice now gives way to spring.
More than 1.5 million people annually visit the Tidal Basin area to see the 3,000 trees given as a gift from Japan more than a century ago. Unfortunately, crowds are still coming this year despite pleas to not given social distancing. Beating this plague upon our land means a lot of sacrifices, including not seeing the trees we wait for all year.
Crowds are probably 10 percent of the norm and that’s still just too much given the state of shelter in place. My wife and I arrived at dawn on Friday thinking it would be safe only to find thousands of people there. We just drove around rather than risk getting out. My wife still took plenty of nice photos like the one above.
National Park police have opted to close the roads around the Tidal Basin for the next few days to discourage crowds, though plenty of folks still come. It’s scary we could be condemning ourselves to further illness by seeing the trees.
There are few visitors in town given everything seems closed. The outdoor monuments are open for now, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Hopefully, this pandemic will pass soon and next year we’re pack the Tidal Basin in joy.
