A Friday Afternoon

Since we had the day off last Friday due to the Holiday Weekend, Ellin and I went to visit a park near her house that turned out to have beautiful gardens. I only snapped a few photos because there were just too many pretty flowers to take pictures of them all.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Back at the end of March/early April DC had its annual Cherry Blossom Festival. I thought it sounded really fun and headed down there at the peak viewing time. I had visions of strolling along the path by the water and the Cherry trees and enjoying the sights. Indeed, there was water and there were Cherry trees, my vision just didn't take into account the other 5 million people who would also be there.

I was told there would be a lot of people there, but as I came to find out, my understanding of "a lot of people" was insufficient to accurately describe the situation. The best way I can describe it is if you've seen one of those photos of a beach in China where you can't even see the beach or the water because there are so many people- that's what downtown DC was like. It was nearly impossible to take any pictures with that many people around and honestly, I find it nearly impossible to enjoy anything with that many people around.

Here are a few photos I did manage to capture:

Polipoli State Park

Last Sunday I went hiking at Polipoli State Park. Several people had told me I should check it out. I had tried to go earlier this year, but the road in is a dirt track (you're supposed to have 4WD, but I managed in my car) and part of it had been washed out in the flash floods this past past "winter." I was able to get in this time and go hiking. I had not realized that the area where the hiking trail is is also where we had a large fire about a year and a half ago. The park is a hardwood forest in the Kula Forest Reserve, high on the side of Haleakala.

Here's some shots of the hike. You'll see a lot of evidence of the fire, but I mostly didn't take pictures of the really dead and burned parts of the forest.