Just because many adults lack the convenient excuse of a school spring break does not mean they do not want to shake off the winter drudgery by escaping for a warm holiday in California or a flower festival in Virginia. Tour operators across the country plan tours around peak flower seasons and warm spring weather.
Visitors can decide if they would rather choose a locale based on temperature or on the beauty of the first spring wildflowers, as both can bring color and a memorable adventure to the new year.
National Cherry Blossom Festival
CTN Travels
For Washington D.C., April brings not only showers, but also the blooms of nearly 3,700 cherry trees at the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Many tour operators, including CTN Travels, host visitors yearly in the country’s capital to celebrate the famous festival that originally started as a way to remember Tokyo’s gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the city.
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| Courtesy Destination DC |
“It’s considered one of the top events in the country, so it’s a popular tour even in this economy,” said Rick Pharr, president of CTN Travels, based in Midland, N.C. “Once the cherry blossoms are in bloom, they are stunningly beautiful with pink blossoms, which is a big plus for groups who may still be in the throes of winter. They like to get away to someplace warm and beautiful when they are looking at their spring plans.”
More than a million people attend the two-week festival to welcome the spring and watch a parade and a street festival. Giant colorful balloons, marching bands and performers proceed down Constitution Avenue during the parade spectacle. The street festival begins right after the parade to honor the Japanese culture with Japanese arts, traditional dances and food.
During CTN’s tour, groups receive plenty of chances to admire the cherry trees, with stops at several scenic locations that highlight the trees and some of the most famous D.C. landmarks, such as the Jefferson Memorial.
The tour also includes a cruise on the Potomac River on the Odyssey cruise ship.
Additional stops on the tour ensure that guests experience many of the capital’s main attractions, such as the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, the Smithsonian Institution and several war memorials.
California Dreaming
Main Street Tours
A sentiment made popular by the Mamas and the Papas song “California Dreamin” that wished for a winter getaway to sunny California helped inspire the title for Main Street Tours’ April trip “California Dreaming with The Glory of Easter.”
The trip journeys through southern California, with stops in San Diego, Palm Springs and Catalina Island.
“One of the advantages going in the spring is definitely the weather,” said Laurie Lincoln, president of Main Street Tours, in Torrance, Calif. “Springtime California weather is around the 70s. In the San Diego Zoo, it’s also nice because there are a lot of baby animals being born.”
The prime California wildflower season also adds to the attraction of visiting the state during April. California poppies spring up all over San Diego, and the normally bare deserts erupt with the color of wildflowers and the Joshua trees’ blooms.
With more than 4,000 rare and endangered animals, the 100-acre San Diego Zoo is one of the first attractions on the tour. Giant pandas, elephants and gorillas live at the zoo, which can be seen by walking, by riding on guided tour buses and by riding an overhead gondola lift called the Skyfari.
Afterward, groups travel to Palm Springs for the Ziegfeld-style variety show The Fabulous Palm Spring Follies, in which talented and energetic performers age 60 and up perform music, dance and vaudeville acts from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Another leading draw to the tour during April remains the yearly production of one of the largest Passion plays in the United States at Crystal Cathedral’s The Glory of Easter. Amazing special effects, detailed costumes and a cast of more than 200 volunteer actors turn the production into an acclaimed event for the internationally televised church.
Holland Tulip Festival
Mayflower Tours
Spring in America often comes close to duplicating spring in Europe such as Mayflower Tours’ Holland Tulip Festival tour. A tradition with roots reaching back to Michigan’s early Dutch settlers, the festival honors the Dutch heritage of the area with 150,000 tulips cheerily announcing the coming of spring at Windmill Island in Holland, Mich.
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| Courtesy Mayflower Tours |
Windmill Island, located on the edge of downtown Holland, features not only blankets of tulips but also a 248-year-old Dutch windmill called De Zwaan. As part of the festival, the Muziekparade, or Music Parade, presents nearly 40 bands, floats, huge balloons, horses and klompen dancers to make guests forget they are in Michigan.
“The flora of the trip is amazing,” said Mary Novak-Beatty, vice president of marketing for Mayflower Tours. “The highlight of the trip is the Veldheer-DeKlomp Tulip Garden. I think it rivals the one in Holland — it is that spectacular.”
The Veldheer-DeKlomp Tulip Garden grows more than 5 million tulips for a seemingly endless display of red, white and yellow flowers each spring. The 1950 garden also offers Dutch pottery, wooden shoes and Dutch pastries for a Netherlands shopping experience.
Next on the tour, groups can step into the elegance of the movie Somewhere in Time at the Grand Hotel. Guests staying at the Victorian property on Mackinac Island can only use horse-drawn carriages and bicycles for transportation, as the island forbids automobiles.
“The Grand Hotel’s view is like looking out over the ocean,” said Novak-Beatty. “From the hotel’s porches, you can sit on the rocking chairs and relax while you look over the lake.”
www.mayflowertours.com
New England
Culinary Tour
Good Times Travel
Though the majority of trips to New England take place during the fall, the spring can prove a picturesque and less crowded time to see the region.
Good Times Travel , based in Fountain Valley, Calif., developed one May itinerary through New England with a focus on the culinary and an additional benefit of spring colors that cover the ground and trees.
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| Courtesy Newport, Rhode Island CVB |
“When I researched the tour, the Vermont CVB told me that May was one of the prettiest times of year because of all the spring flowers,” said Angie Bordagaray, president of Good Times Travel. “I wanted to do something that wasn’t just fall foliage. The main emphasis is culinary tours, because that way you get to experience things you wouldn’t normally get to on a regular sightseeing tour.”
The tour through Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont follows the famous cuisines of the area, starting at the seaside town of Newport, R.I., with a wine tasting at the Newport Vineyards. Other culinary treats in Rhode Island are a clambake, a behind-the-scenes ravioli tour and a stop at a bakery in Providence.
Once in Maine, the group goes on the hunt for lobster on a lobster-pulling cruise to discover where their upcoming lobster dinner came from. Afterward, the tour interweaves more culinary attractions into the route, such as Portland’s Cold River Vodka Co., Vermont’s Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory and Waterbury Center’s Cold Hollow Cider Mill.
The Best of the South
Notch Above Tours
Visitors can herald the beginning of spring in March with azaleas, dogwoods and daffodils on the tour “The Best of the South: Savannah, Charleston, Hilton Head and Jekyll Island” by Notch Above Tours of Colchester, Vt.
The tour combines springtime beauty with Southern charm and cuisine.
“March is one of the freshest times to be there,” said Gwendy Lauritzen, vice president of Notch Above Tours. “Everything is coming out to bloom. It’s absolutely beautiful. The flowers in Savannah and Charleston make all of these preserved homes look so graceful and so typical of the South.”
With temperatures in the 60s and 70s, the group starts the tour by learning the history of Savannah on a driving tour of the city. The flowers enhance the year-round beauty of the city’s 19th-century neighborhoods, which feature gingerbread trim, stained-glass windows and authentic Southern restaurants.
In Charleston, the group can explore another flower-bedecked historic city with old churches, iron lace gateways and 18th-century homes. One of the oldest gardens in America, the 1680s Magnolia Plantation Home and Gardens, places even more emphasis on how many spring flowers come up in April with its 250 varieties of azaleas.
The tour also includes beaches in the spring break itinerary at Jekyll Island and St. Simons Island and a guided tram tour of Georgia’ Golden Isles.
Virginia Spring Kaleidoscope
Mid-Atlantic Tours and Receptive Services
Dogwoods, redbuds, azaleas and other flowering trees and plants bring Virginia out of the dead of winter each spring, prompting Norfolk’s International Azalea Festival each April.
With this event as its focus, the Mid-Atlantic Tours and Receptive Services, based in Stephens City, Va., plans its spring tour through Norfolk, Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Richmond and Charlottesville.
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| Courtesy Mid-Atlantic Tours |
“Virginia comes alive during its peak blossom season at the end of April,” said Kate Scopetti, president of Mid-Atlantic Tours. “It’s particularly beautiful that time of year with azaleas and other flowers blooming in the cities and parks.”
Gardens mix with military power on the tour; in one day in Norfolk, guests will see both the International Tattoo and the Norfolk Botanical Gardens. The International Tattoo began as an old Scottish tradition turned American with pipes, drums, pageantry and 850 international performers from groups like the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. Only occurring one weekend a year, the event provides another reason to travel to Virginia in the spring.
On the second day of the trip, the group tour ensures reserved seats for the International Azalea Festival Parade, along with time to explore the Nauticus’ exhibits on Virginia’s naval history, ocean technology and the most striking artifact of the museum, the USS Wisconsin, one of the largest battleships ever built.
In the following days, the tour delves into the birth of the United States with stops at Colonial Williamsburg, the Thomas Jefferson-designed Virginia State Capitol in Richmond and Jefferson’s Monticello home.
