Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

The weatherman promised us a sunny weekend - and he didn't let us down!! After several days of rain, the weekend was (once again) in a word, phenomenal. We knew that April was the month for the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The exact dates are a moving target, depending on when the tulips actually bloom. We were in luck, they were in bloom this weekend.

Skagit Valley is about an hour north of Seattle, so only about two hours from here. Not a bad drive. There are two main gardens that showcase the tulips and daffodils, with many fields spread out all over the place that are full of the flowers. The photo below is from the first one we went to, Roozengaarde.

Roozengaarde has a great garden area that is surrounded by fields of many different colors of tulips and daffodils. I liked this one with the Cascade foothills in the background.

There were so many different photogenic places to snap photos of the kids and flowers at Roozengaarde. We spent a good chunk of time here enjoying the sights and smells, not to mention ice cream.

While walking around and taking photos (along with a ton of other people armed with everything from iPhones to the Canon/Nikon monsters requiring a two-person lift), we ran into a gentleman that worked here that tried to tell us that Keukenhof (we had to supply the name!) bought 70% of their bulbs from Roozengaarde. Maybe they do, but we've actually been to Keukenhof and the surrounding fields, and I find 70% a bit of a stretch. Your mileage may vary. Anyways, Keukenhof had a great area where there were these blue flowers set amongst some trees that was reminiscent of a river. I like how the Roozengaarde people set up these flowers in that same undulating flow.

What photo session would be complete without a little bit of hamming around? The kids had done pretty good up to this point, and were ready to run and make some noise.

When we got back, there was plenty of time to mow the lawn, play some baseball, and clean up the house a bit. All in all, a busy but fun weekend. Have a great day everybody!

Cheers,

Marc