Let's Tiptoe Through the Tulips

I finally made it to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

If you, like me, remember Tiny Tim with his ukulele and his wild falsetto serenading us through the tulips, give this a listen while you read my post!

Fourteen springs in Washington. Fourteen seasons of lengthening light, of green springing from barren ground, of kaleidoscopic color budding from branches, blooming from bulbs, appearing on perennial stems. Glorious surprises awaited the first March, April, May, and June my husband and I lived in each of our four fixer upper homes. Subsequent springs were filled with anticipation, as though awaiting friends returned home after a long absence, eager to show them how we’d transformed the built environment while they’d been hibernating.

And now, though our house isn’t fully finished, we’ve stopped moving, and the frenzy of home renovation as livelihood has shifted to remodeling homes for others, offering time to explore parts of Washington new to us. Last weekend Kevin and I ventured to the Skagit Valley, 70-ish miles north of Seattle, for the annual Tulip Festival which runs the month of April.

Saturday we visited Roozengaarde, founded in 1955, the largest grower of tulips and daffodils in North America. You can read more about their history here. We walked through the beautifully planted demonstration gardens into a mile of colorful fields, accompanied by thousands of visitors, many posing for special photos. I did a bit of stealth “street photography”, compiled into the collage below (You’ll find me and my husband on opposite sides of the women in the hat).

Tickets are required for each garden, so we visited just this one, and it was plenty to saturate our sense. There were dozens of parking attendants, crossing guards, and groundskeepers, making our visit seamless and enjoyable, and completely worth the $20/person admission fee.

The Valley is wide open and bordered by the Cascade Range on the east, and Mt. Baker, at 10,787 feet, was a nice distant focal point for a number of my photos.

There hadn't been rain for a few days, but I’d seen an Instagram photo a few days earlier with water between the rows, and the reflection was beautiful, so when I saw a bit of water left between rows far out in the fields, I wanted to photograph it. When I crouched down, I saw an adorable frog and wanted to include it as well. It took some time to frame the frog and a bit of flowers. While I was squatting, Kevin stood a few yards away across from the frog and overheard a couple wondering what I was taking photos of. They didn't have any idea, but one told the other to aim that way and shoot, and they’d figure it out later. Who knows if they’ll find the frog, but it was funny to think I’d started a mini mystery trend!

There’s our frog friend near the bottom of the frame

And of course, none of this would be possible without the farmworkers who work tirelessly on our behalf. [I’m pretty sure the bus below transports them to the fields.]

If you want to go…

The Festival runs through April 30, and 5 gardens charge admission during the month. The tulips can bloom well into May, and you can drive by the fields anytime, and a few of them have pullouts where you can stop to take photos at no charge. Get more info here: Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Official Website.

Enjoy a glass of wine, the fabulous picnic area, camping, and lovely conversation at Eagle Haven winery in Sedro-Woolley, which also sells fresh baked Northcoast Sourdough. Kevin bought a loaf of jalapeno cheddar he is still enjoying and raving about. One of the winery owners, a former Marine, and job trainer, used to run a Cisco Networking Academy — the program my husband founded when he first began working at Cisco Systems in the 1990s. He’s the first person we’ve come across “out in the wild” who has worked the program. “You’re my hero,” he said to Kevin, which of course made our wine tasting experience even better.

Want to get off your feet for a sit-down lunch? Shawn O’Donnell’s Irish Pub in Mt. Vernon had the best Rueben my husband has ever tasted — very tender meat, and offered gluten-free buns for me.

We also enjoyed dinner at The Train Wreck Bar in Burlington with rustic live-edged wood bar and table tops, table bases of tree stumps, and split tree benches. They have an in house bakery, a wide local cocktail selection, and some great salads on the menu.

We also took a quick side trip to Deception Pass State Park which straddles the edges of Anacortes/Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island. Pedestrians can walk across the bridge, and follow stairways underneath leading to trails, beach, and the other side of the bridge to safely cross the busy road for a return trip on the opposite side. I’d only been on the bridge once before, at night in the rain on the way to a ferry heading to the San Juan Islands, so it was a treat to return and see what I’d missed.