Tulip Town

Before we get started here's a little geography lesson. We're in Whatcom County, which borders Canada. Just to the south of us is Skagit County. Skagit has a bit going for it: the town of La Connor is very touristy, it has my favorite brew pub the Skagit River Brewery which has wonderful pub food , in February if you drive east you can take part in the Bald Eagle Festival along the banks of the Skagit River, and in April there is the Tulip Festival.

To be honest I'm not sure what makes up the festivals. We've gone to see the Eagles but didn't notice any circus-like goings on that would necessitate calling it a festival, but we may have missed them. The same is true with the Tulip Festival. I know for sure they have a barn dance and there are a couple of quilts put up for auction. You know, big times for farmers. Also, I may have read about pancake breakfasts and parades but I've never seen them. That may be in part due to my demophobia.

My dislike for crowds was put to the test this past Sunday. We arranged to meet Kevin and Katy at Tulip Town (a farm) to see the tulips. Like every other year we've gone we have skipped the festivities and just gone to a farm (or more) to see the flowers. So do a million other people. Literally, over a million people come to Skagit Valley to look at flowers. We saw tour buses. If you get the chance to go, try to do it on a weekday. The crowd this past Sunday wasn't too bad, but the traffic was. It took way to long to get out of there. Thankfully we weren't coming from the south, I saw firsthand what I-5 was like on Saturday. The exit was backed up a good mile.

But we made it and got to see Kevin and Katy so you can't beat that. The flowers were nice too. Actually, as you might imagine with a million yearly pilgrims, they were fantastic. Photos, at least mine, don't do them justice. It is quite a sight to see a sea of vibrant color. You can almost pick the color. Red, orange, yellow, white, purple, pink. The red really stands out, we saw an entire field that was unnaturally red.

We agreed to meet at a farm called Tulip Town. They charge you to get in, which I guess makes sense since you're otherwise just trespassing on their fields. It was five bucks a head (not counting kids) which I decided I didn't mind. If they changed me to park, on the other hand, I wouldn't have liked it. Go figure. Any how they had booths of food, a home-made cash machine ('cause they only accept cash - I suspect some tax shenanigans), a tractor ride, face painting, etc. All the usual Halloween pumpkin farm stuff, minus the pumpkins of course. Lucas was hot-to-trot for the tractor ride. The best part of it was the old guy taking the money, he put everyone in their place based on whether they had forked over the cash. He wasn't mean spirited, but he was loud. He could have saved himself some trouble, though, with a sign or two.

Anyway, as you can guess we took a lot of photos. Like most people we didn't buy any flowers, which is another reason they charge to get in. The boys really seemed to have fun playing in the dirt. They can only put up with looking at so many flowers, I was impressed that Jack only picked one, so to mollify them Kim had them play in a ditch. Personally I prefer crowds to the idea of getting that hard, dry dirt crammed under my nails, but the boys had a great time. As a result we were all hot and tired by the time we left. So to cool us down we decided to stop for a milkshake on the way home. But traffic raised its ugly head and we couldn't get the block off the highway to the restaurant so we had to wait 'til we got back to Bellingham.