Hi friends! It’s one of my favorite times of the year here in the DC area: spring, aka cherry blossom season!
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Peak cherry blossom bloom this year down at the DC tidal basin coincided with us being out of town for the kids’ spring break, and I was worried I might miss the chance to see them, but luckily they were still hanging around when we got home from our travels.
I typically enjoy doing an early morning run to see the cherry blossoms at sunrise because it’s stunning, plus there aren’t a thousand people there, but I didn’t get it together for a sunrise cherry blossom run this year. (Here are a couple sunrise cherry blossom posts from previous years if you’d like to see the pictures: 2023, 2019, and 2016 (<- this one wins for most epic photos/insanely gorgeous sunrise).)
Luckily, though, my college friend Kathleen and I made a running date to go see them on Saturday afternoon and they did not disappoint!
We started our run at Iwo Jima in Rosslyn, VA, which is much easier in terms of parking than trying to park anywhere near the cherry blossoms or monuments in the city. From Iwo Jima to the MLK Jr. Memorial (on the tidal basin in DC) is almost exactly 2 miles, which worked out perfectly to run there and back.
Plus, we got to enjoy the views along the way! I always love the tulips near Iwo Jima at this time of year.
From one angle you have nice views of the Washington Monument in the distance, too.
We ran down along the path next to Arlington Cemetery, over Memorial Bridge, past the Lincoln Memorial and along Independence Avenue until we made it to the entrance to the tidal basin. It was absolutely MOBBED so we took some quick pictures and then headed out of there!
We added on a bit to the route on the way back by running by the WWII Memorial and then back via Constitution Gardens before heading back over Memorial Bridge.
There were SO MANY people out and about – in addition to the cherry blossom draw, apparently there was also a kite flying festival going on by the Washington Monument, too! You can just make out some of the kites in the photo below. So. Crowded!!
I haven’t been running a ton lately so it felt really good to get out there. I forgot to wear my watch but I’m guessing we covered about 4.5 or 5 miles total with some running and some walking.
In other weekend news, Matt fired up our grill for the first time in quite awhile! Burgers, yum.
They hit the spot! I ended up eating most of Wes’s, too, as he only wanted a couple bites. More for me!
We also partook in some Easter fun this weekend with my parents; we headed over to their place on Sunday morning for Easter brunch and a little Easter egg hunt for the kids. Riese wanted special hair for the occasion (and she also wore a dress that I wore when I was her age – the pic of her hair below is before she changed). So fun!
Brunch was delicious, too. We had some sautéed mushrooms (cooked separately since they needed more time than the eggs) mixed with scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese, fruit salad with honey lime yogurt dressing, regular salad with a homemade lemon vinaigrette (I basically made my lemon balsamic dressing but with white wine vinegar instead of balsamic to mix it up), and bacon.
Anyway! As I mentioned, our kids were on spring break last week and we did some road tripping around. They are back at school today (yay, it was time) and Matt and I are catching up on work and life!
We didn’t go too far away from home for our spring break adventures – just a couple hours away because honestly we did not have the energy to do anything huge with a toddler in the mix. 😉 Here’s a sneak preview pic from our trip (any guesses where we were?), and I’ll share a full recap of what we got into on Friday.
Stay tuned, and have a great week!
Was anyone else traveling for spring break recently? What did you do?
