You may have heard (honestly, I have no idea what the press outside the region is reporting about this) that people are stupid and still flocked to the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin here in D.C.
Earlier in the week, I had given some thought to riding my bike down to the area and doing a loop of Hains Point (it’s an island adjacent to the Tidal Basin) just to see the blossoms. But the fact that there were enough people down there to be newsworthy made that seem like a stupid idea, because people park at Hains Point and walk over to the Tidal Basin. Or they just drive their car around Hains Point to admire the view from their windshield. But either way, that didn’t seem like it would make social distancing possible unless I fancied going in the dark, which seemed like it would defeat the whole idea of going. So I didn’t.
However, while the Tidal Basin is home to the most famous of D.C.’s cherry trees groupings, we actually have quite a few elsewhere in the city, including at Rose Park, which is just a few blocks away.
So, I biked over there, and while there were people about, they were obviously locals who were mostly sensibly keeping their distance from one another.
So here’s this spring’s batch of cherry blossom shots (they were slightly past prime today and now it’s raining, so this will be the best I can offer).