Branch Brook Park – Cherry Blossom Festival

If you follow me on Instagram then you might have seen in my stories that I went to Branch Brook Park in Newark yesterday to see the cherry blossoms. The large park has a week long cherry blossom festival every spring and today is the last day. Obviously you can go any time while the trees are in bloom to see them – you’re not limited to this one week – but since cherry blossoms only last about 2 weeks you’ve got to be quick about it. Also the festival just means that each day there is some sort of special event to celebrate the cherry blossoms at the park. I think there was a walk-a-thon or 5k or something one day and yesterday was Essex County Family Day.

I’ve never been to Branch Brook Park, but I’d heard that their cherry blossoms are beautiful. After doing a quick online search after seeing a sign advertising for the cherry blossom festival, I learned that the park has over 5,000, yes 5,000 (!), cherry blossom trees! So my friend and I headed up to Newark to check it out.

The traffic was horrible for a Saturday afternoon. I was seriously not expecting so much traffic. I know the festival was going on and also Senator Cory Booker made his formal announcement for his run for President in Newark today, but they couldn’t all be going to Newark. So I really don’t know why the highway was so packed. But anyway, we got to Newark and then there was a ton of traffic trying to get to the park. After about 15 minutes of being stuck just trying to get on the main road for the park, we decided to turn off on to a side street and parked in a residential area about a 8-10 minute walk away. This ended up working out really well because we weren’t stuck trying to just get in to the park and then when leaving we weren’t going to be stuck again.

The weather was beautiful, but I was pretty toasty in my sweater. The weather was supposed to be cloudy and around 70. It ended up being 80 and sunny. Seriously, I saw like 2 clouds – the sky was blue and clear. We walked around and I took a ton of photos of the trees and blossoms. We didn’t explore the whole park, but we saw a good portion before we decided to turn back and head to the car. We were getting tired of walking and I was getting really hot, even after stopping for an ice cream cone.

There were a lot of people around so it was hard to get photos of the trees without a crowd of people in them. If you’re able to go to the park during the week, then that would be ideal because there would probably be a lot less people. But seeing as how I’ll be at work during this week and then heading out of town on Friday (yay spring break!), that wasn’t an option for me. In any case, I had a great time!

I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I do!