Tulips Festival

Every year, Skagit Valley holds the Tulips festival in April where tulips bloom in all sorts of colours and visitors come flocking to enjoy the festive atmosphere.

We had to go, being our first, and we love tulips - the world peace flower.

Skagit Valley is 60miles north of Seattle, 60 miles south of Vancouver, Canada. We took an hour+ to reach. This is the furthest we have ever traveled here. Its a lovely countryside, with few visitors. There are several farms, but we chose Tulip Town cos it has a windmill, which was actually built after the owner went back to his hometown - Holland. So this is the exact replica of the windmills you get to see in Holland.

It was pretty crowded with the locals, and tourists (brought in by the tour groups) taking pictures, venturing to the center of the plots, posing with the flowers. It was a busy sight ! We spent about an hour+ here, after which we decided to leave for lunch.

Boy, this is really countryside. We thought of trying some famous pies in Berry Barn - another farmhouse, and drove to it. We thought we had lost our way as we had reached the road, but there were no signs to indicate. Stopping to check the maps, we decided to venture slightly forward. Lo ! It was right in front of us! Happily we turned in. Boy were we surprised to find out its actually selling fruit pies. They look like the chicken pies from Don (SG), with blueberry, rhubard, etc fillings. Oops, not my kind of pie. But nevertheless we made good of the situation with CH's pose with the "animals" from the farm. (See photo)

Disappointed, we left and decided to try out another famous eatery - Net Drive-in, somewhere along the freeway. Boy how we wandered. We totally relyed on our GPS to get there, but we couldn't find it. GPS said we had reached our destination. Ya, right. By now there was already a jam build-up with everyone bustling to get to the freeway. We were very hungry, tired, frustrated, decided not to search anymore, and proceed to our next destination - Seattle Premium Outlets for late lunch.

(A pity, we had wanted to linger awhile more here, and probably visit the 2nd tulips farm - Roozengaarde. As a friend once said, its good to have regrets, to make sure we'll be back again. Next time, I will bring our own lunch to have it here with the tulips, and be sure to visit the daffodils and irises that are nearby. And I will get off the freeway early, get my bikes here to roam the rest of the countryside.)