While I love seeing the cherry blossoms appear every year, I hate contending with the traffic and huge crowds. We skipped the Tidal Basin altogether last year and just got a few drive-by shots from a nearby highway. This year, Wednesday was forecast to be a “perfect” day, and Tim had a day off from work, so we drove down there, amazingly found a relatively close parking place and spent a couple of hours taking it all in. You can see wall-to-wall people lining the walkway off in the distance.

Best to view in "Original" because other versions resized by Pbase are decidedly unsharp.

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Wednesday was a spectacular day, and Tim was off, so we decided to brave the gridlock on the streets and crowds of people to view the cherry blossoms on the Tidal Basin, although it certainly wasn’t as packed as last weekend.

The city of Tokyo gifted 3,000 cherry trees to the US capital 107 years ago, in 1912. Despite the hassles of getting to the Tidal Basin, many DC area residents honor the tradition of visiting during peak bloom, and people come from all over the country to see this gorgeous sight.

Above water, for now, posted earlier: