Hey friends! Earlier this week, I did something fun: my annual sunrise run around the DC cherry blossoms!
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For this year’s adventure I recruited my friend Katie to join me, and we drove into the city around 6am on Wednesday morning so we could be at the tidal basin by sunrise.
We were in the city by 6:15, but had some issues parking (the spot I had planned on at the start of Hains Point was blocked off – not sure why, maybe for the upcoming cherry blossom festival?) so I was glad we got there extra early.
By 6:30 we found another spot to park (on 23rd street) and ran from there down to the Lincoln Memorial.
The early morning Lincoln Memorial scene is always fun because it’s pretty much all people exercising. Solidarity! (Most of the people working out were behind us on the Lincoln steps.)
The reflecting pool is totally drained now. Guess it’s getting its annual cleaning!
From there, we ran over to the MLK Memorial and entered the tidal basin there. We were hoping for a nice sunrise (will any other year ever top my epic 2016 cherry blossom sunrise pictures?!), but unfortunately there were too many clouds. Bummer!
The pre-dawn light was really pretty though.
Hello, cherry blossoms! They weren’t all 100% out and in peak form, but getting very close. It was hard to get a non-blurry pic in the dim lighting when we first arrived!
There were a bunch of other people checking out the blossoms with us, but it certainly wasn’t mobbed like it gets later in the day.
Other people around = easy to find someone to take a pic of us, though!
The people were sparse enough it was easy to jog around the entire tidal basin, though, taking breaks for pictures as we felt inspired. 🙂
This is always one of my favorite views below. As you can see the blossoms aren’t totally filled out yet, but the dark shadows of the trees with the dawn sky backdrop was really pretty.
Around and around we go!
It was really fun to be out there. I’m lucky that nowadays I can usually run right after dropping the kids off (vs. at 6am in the dark), but it was fun to be out in the world so early and on an adventure.
Thank you to Katie for joining me for it (and to our husbands for doing the kid breakfast and school drop off routine solo in our absence… Katie’s kids go to school with mine)!
After our loop of the tidal basin, we exited back at MLK Memorial and then ran over to the mall to add on a little distance, doing a loop around the Washington Monument and then from there back over to my car on 23rd street.
It was pretty deserted down there!
We ended up covering 4.5 miles which felt good.
I’m considering going back one day next week (I’m out of town this weekend) to see if I can get a better sunrise and potentially see the full peak bloom of the cherry blossoms, but we’ll see… not sure the logistics will work out with kid drop off stuff and Matt’s work schedule!
Have a great weekend friends, and see you back here next week!
Have you ever come to see the DC cherry blossoms? What did you think?
