Visit to Branch Brook Park, April 26, 2014

So, I have been wanting to make my annual visit to Branch Brook Park this spring for quite some time, to see the famous cherry blossom festival. Branch Brook Park, right here in Newark, New Jersey, has a huge amount of cherry blossoms - more than Washington, DC has! 

It was also among the country's first county parks, so there is some real history here!

And I did not know this until this year, but one of my favorite historical landscapers apparently played a prominent role in designing this - Frederick Olmstead! You may or may not know the name, but he had a hand in designing some of the continent's most famous and iconic urban parks, including Central Park, Mont Royal Park in Montreal, and the grounds of the Colombia World Expo in 1892-1893 in Chicago, surrounding the beautiful White City that Chicago had went to such extraordinary lengths to build. I first learned about that while reading "The Devil in the White City", a truly great book of history by Erik Larrson that I would highly recommend to anyone and everyone! It really reads like a novel!

In any case, yes, this year, I brought my son on a beautiful and sunny Saturday afternoon in late April. It has been an unusually cool spring thus far, but since it is fairly late in the season for the blossoms, I was worried that we might be a bit late, and that they would be well past their prime.

Apparently, I need not have worried, because in fact, they were mostly still budding. I took pictures of some of the ones that looked full (and some of them looked past their prime, for that matter). 

It is unusual, that so many of them can go progress at various stages like that. 

Still, the time was right, the opportunity was there, and off we went to the park!

My son loved the lake by my favorite part of park, right by the church. There is just something about water with those cherry blossoms that makes everything look absolutely wonderful! I think that is why Washington's Cherry Blossom Festival is world famous!

We arrived a bit before noon, roughly, and began our walk around. He was carrying his toy Minecraft sword, and sometimes he would sheath this weapon in the back of his shirt, like an old knight carrying his deadly weapon on his back, ready to unsheath to do battle at any given moment!

There were times when he looked positively contemplative, like when he was staring out at the water (he always loved water, too). But he did not just enjoy the water. This offered him an opportunity to climb one tree after another (see the pictures below). He was really having a blast by this point!

Overall, it was a fun day. Despite the mild surprise of it not only not not having reached it's peak, but still largely being in the process of budding, even though May was now a few days away, there was enough of a splash of spring color to make this worth the trip, and enough memories made in that one afternoon to be very appreciative of!

Afterwards, I took him to what appears to be climbing to the top of the list for our favorite burger place - 25 Burgers on Route 46. It has a cool retro feel to it, and the burgers really are great! If you get a chance, take a visit to both the park and this restaurant and treat yourself!

Here are some of the pictures of the visit this year, with my little son showing his Spiderman-like abilities with climbing!

You can probably tell what I was trying to do with this picture. The sun was reflecting brightly on the water, and the bottom of the bridge was reflecting that watery sunlight reflection, which looked pretty cool. Not sure the picture really did it justice, but I tried, anyway.