Cherry Blossoms in DC

We attended for the first time a spring or two ago. We had seen pictures and video, but they never did it justice. It was just beautiful.

Any suggestions for good locations to camp in the area to visit the festival?

This person's blog has information on all of the CG's around DC.

I have stayed in all of them. IMHO, for a first time visit, I recommend Cherry Hill Park. It's the most popular one around and it is the most convenient to the Metro that takes you downtown.

If you can do without hook ups, there is Greenbelt National Park that is also close to the Metro.

Just a word of warning. While the Cherry Blossoms are beautiful at this time, do not expect to do a lot of museum tours during this time. We visited during the Cherry Blossom festival a few years ago and the lines for the museums were incredibly long. There were lines of tour buses bringing groups to DC for the Cherry Blossoms and of course those folks were visiting all the museums on the mall.

Having said that, once you see the Cherry Blossoms, there are many things to see and do around DC that are away from the mall area such as the National Zoo, Mount Vernon- George Washington's house, Georgetown, etc.