Seattle Peeps -
I grew up here in the Pacific Northwest but never have I trundled up north to see the annual tulip festival in the Skagit Valley. Until this year.
And it was so worth it. Check it out:
On Saturday the boys went off to a baseball game while the girls (my mother-in-law Cherie, my sister-in-law Megan, and Megan's Aunt Marcia) went to see flowers. Ben tagged along as well.
We went on probably the busiest day of the entire festival and I won't lie: it was crowded. Traffic was slow all the way from Everett. Be wiser than us and go on a weekday, in the very, very early morning.
Here is the skinny: There are two tulip/daffodil growers in the valley (TulipTown and RoosenGarde) and each year they plant numerous fields with a dizzying assortment of flowers.
Each grower has a presentation garden that you have to pay to see ($5) and thanks to a tip from my pal Sara, we headed to TulipTown to check out their offerings.
They did not disappoint:
The sucky thing is that you can't actually go down the rows of flowers. You're only allowed to venture three feet in and touching/plucking/whacking the blooms is strongly discouraged. I thought that policy was absolute rubbish until someone pointed out that the fields would be decimated if a million people (which is how many attend the festival) were allowed to romp and play with wild abandon.
Which is true, I suppose.
But still. I wanted to run down the rows. Sounds like fun, yes?
Anyway, we still got a few nice pictures.
We also had lunch in La Conner, which is a cutsy, but not saccharine, historic little town.
Megan and I also ate the biggest ice cream cones you've ever seen in your life from Snow Goose Produce Stand. Mine was appropriately called Death By Chocolate.
It'll probably take years to work off the calories from that sucker.
This kiddo loves his Auntie.
And grandma.
His mother, however, had forgotten a jacket for the wee little bambino, and was in the dog house. Poor little babe. We wrapped him up tight in a blanket though and he preserved in his usual plucky manner. It helped that we fed him copious quantities of chocolate ice cream. This kid truly is his mother's son.
And last but not least, my favorite of the bunch:
xxoo,
Sonja
