This weekend my dear husband was tricked into lovingly accompanied me up to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, about an hour and a half north of Seattle. It was #4 on a BuzzFeed list of 29 surreal places in America and with it being one of the closest I felt compelled to check it out.
We left early Sunday morning to avoid the crowds and got there right when it opened. Good thing too because when we were headed back to Seattle around 10:30am, the exit off I-5 was backed up at least twenty minutes of us driving in the opposite direction.
The festival is set up at a driving tour throughout the valley, but we only got out at RoozenGaarde, a farm that ships tulips worldwide, year round. The pictures here make it seem like the fields stretch miles into the surrounding snow-capped Cascades, but they’re really only several acres, making it one of the few instances where the photos are perhaps better than real life.
In addition to tulips, the daffodils were just at the end of their bloom:
Once we had explored the open field (and as it was getting crowded with visitors), we headed across the street to RoozenGaarde’s display garden and visitor center. There they had more varieties of tulips than I knew even existed!
Jeff’s favorites, “the fuzzy ones”.
Display gardens
My favorites
All in all it was a fun morning exploring and we made it back to Seattle before noon. I highly recommend going early (or on a week day) as it was packed by the time we left.
Sorry for what can only be described as a batch of landscape porn. Trust me when I say that I really did try to narrow down my pictures from the trip to only the really good ones.
