Tulip Festival

Every year in April there's at least one nice weekend. One where the rain stops, the clouds disappear, and the sun comes out for a few days. Timely enough, there's also the tulip festival, an annual flowers-everywhere event an hour north of Seattle in the Skagit Valley. I've been a few times, and went again when my sister came out to visit me. (We were on our way up to Vancouver and stopped along the way.)

The tulip festival is hard to plan ahead of time, because no one knows exactly when the tulips will bloom. Smart event organizers have planted daffodils and irises (the former which bloom before the tulips and the latter which bloom after) to minimize the chances that you won't see any flowers in bloom if you're coming from out of the area. Still, the main attraction is the tulips, and there are by far more fields of them than anything else.

When Danielle visited, we were graced with both the tulip-blooming and the nice weather on the same weekend. So we quickly walked around the fields and took some photos. If you have more time to spend, I've heard that bicycling around is a joy, but if you decide to go this route, leave early. When the tulips are in full bloom, traffic becomes an issue (and people often look a little too much at the flowers and not enough at the roads.)

One year, I did stop by the sidewalk-sale-esque fair they have there, but I was unimpressed and wouldn't recommend this. Instead, grab some food in town and head up to Deception Pass, which is only a little further away.