By Leslee Jaquette
Wearing dark shades, my grown son and my middle-aged cousin crouch amongst acres of red tulips in the spring sunshine. Looking more like Mafia thugs than Anne Geddes babies (tots photographed in flower costumes), the guys oblige me with a big smile for the camera.
Photographing my rugged menfolk amidst a sea of brilliant petals during the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival tickles my funny bone and delights the cones and rods in my eyeballs. I am not the only one. Every year during the three-week festival, more than 300,000 people visit 1,000 acres of tulip fields planted in a 15-mile radius southwest of Mt. Vernon, Washington.
Known worldwide for its tulips, the Skagit Valley invites visitors to participate in a full calendar of festivals and events, explore its rural communities and recreate on the Skagit River. From La Conner and Mt. Vernon east to Marblemount, Washington’s Skagit Valley promises to overload all the senses with its natural beauty and rural charms.
FESTIVALS
The Skagit Valley is best known for three major festivals and a crowded calendar of community events. Starting in 1984, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival has put the region on the map. The 30-year-old Tulip Festival Street Fair runs Friday through Sunday, April 25-27, 2014.
Three, family-operated tulip farms, Lefeber Bulb Co., Roozengaarde and Tulip Town, form the basis for the festival, which lasts nearly a month and boasts an amazing assortment of events.
Beyond touring tulip fields with their gardens, greenhouses and gift shops, the festival offers everything from the Downtown Mount Vernon Street Fair and Kiwanis Salmon Barbecue to fun runs, golf tournaments, concerts and quilt walk. Several new events have been added in recent years including Woodfest, a celebration of Sedro-Woolley’s logging roots.
Due to the great popularity of the Tulip Festival, driving the area on weekends has become as much fun as a Seattle rush hour commute. One way to avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic is to visit the fields during the week. The other is to hop on the Suzuki Tulip Transit. The transit publishes a scheduled route during the week. It also operates two of three weekends of the festival. It departs from Prime Outlets at Burlington.
Established in 1995, the Skagit Valley Highland Games and Scottish Faire, based at the Edgewater Park in Mount Vernon, has developed into an enormously popular festival. Every mid-July, the two-day event features world famous Scottish bagpiping bands, Highland dancing and Celtic athletic competitions. In addition, visitors enjoy sheepdog demonstrations and trials, food fair, beer garden and military displays including caber and sheaf tosses.
Another great excuse to visit the valley is the Festival of Family Farms. The early October event features 13 family farms that open their gates to visitors interested in learning more about working farms. The farms give demonstrations and share information about everything from dairy and vegetable farming and husbandry to forestry, crop rotation and honey production. Admission is free to the farms, but some may charge a small fee for activities and food. Farms invite visitors to participate in all sorts of activities including scavenger hunts, wool carding, hayrides, pumpkin painting and egg hunts.
Most every community in the Skagit Valley hosts some sort of colorful, family-oriented festival. In August Mount Vernon hosts the Skagit County Fair. Burlington invites visitors to eat their fill of strawberry shortcake at one of many booths selling this sweet dessert during the three-day Berry Dairy Days in July.
Also in August, during Good Olde Days in Concrete visitors can catch the Little Miss Good Olde Days pageant or dress up the kids in frontierwear for the children’s parade and soapbox derby. In early September Sedro-Woolley Founders’ Days reenacts an early 20th Century bank robbery. Every fall the arts are the focus of two, La Conner events including the Museum of Northwest Art and Architecture Tour of Homes and Art’s Alive! In February, the U.S. Forest Service hosts the Upper Skagit Bald Eagle Festival in Concrete and Rockport. During the two-day event, trained hosts with telescopes help visitors spot eagles.
COMMUNITIES & ATTRACTIONS
While Anacortes and Fidalgo Island are often considered part of the Skagit Valley, for space reasons we have chosen to highlight the more contiguous communities of the Skagit Valley. Given those perimeters, Mount Vernon and La Conner are as close to cosmopolitan as Skagit Valley gets.
Situated off I-5, Mount Vernon is the natural start to many valley explorations. With the “tulip” smokestack as herald, the county seat has been rated “The Best Small City in America” by The New Rating Guide to Life in America’s Small Cities. In addition to its popular festivals, visitors walk the brick sidewalks of historic Old Towne. Others stop on Saturday’s to browse the booths at the Downtown Skagit Farmers Market (June – Sept.) along the riverfront. Across the bridge at Edgewater Park, anglers, picnickers and little kids enjoy the sandy beaches along the bend in the Skagit River.
After a 15-minute drive west, past fertile farms and fields, visitors reach La Conner on the Swinomish Channel. Rated “most exciting small town” and “best romantic getaway” by King TV Evening Magazine viewers, La Conner offers visitors a dynamic destination. Here couples stroll First Street with its dozens of intriguing shops, world-class galleries and waterfront eateries.
In the center of town cyclists relax side-by-side with boaters and shoppers, enjoying homemade soup or, allegedly, the biggest cones in town at the La Conner Landing Deli & Espresso. Known as an arts community, La Conner visitors prowl three excellent museums: the Skagit County Historical Museum, La Conner Quilt Museum and the Museum of Northwest Art. Nearby, the La Conner Marina welcomes thousands of boaters stopping over en route to and from the San Juan Islands.
Burlington and Sedro-Woolley are located near the junction of I-5 and Highway 20 (North Cascades Highway). An historic logging town, Burlington is known as a “retail paradise” home to a major shopping mall and a factory outlet center. Also key to the early logging industry, Sedro-Woolley acts as the gateway to the North Cascades and sport fishing. The town hosts Loggerodeo, the state’s oldest, ongoing Fourth of July celebration with logging contests, parades, carnival and rodeo.
Further east on Highway 20, Concrete keeps the past alive with murals on its historic downtown buildings. Nearby, the Baker Bridge, at one time the world’s largest concrete span, leads to Puget Sound Energy’s Visitor Center and Baker Dam where migrating salmon are channeled into holding tanks, lifted into trucks and driven several miles upstream. Here the fish are released into the Baker Lake reservoir.
Rockport and Marblemount are the last two vestiges of civilization in eastern Skagit County. Rockport is best known for quiet Rockport State Park, nestled in the dense forest on the flanks of Sauk Mountain. Another camping and fishing option is the Howard Miller Steelhead Park situated along the Skagit River. Rockport is also a staging area for visitors flocking to the Skagit River Bald Eagle Preserve and Interpretive Center.
Sixteen miles east of Rockport, Marblemount describes itself as the “Gateway to the American Alps.” A sign warns travelers that this is the last gas for 69 miles and the last tavern for 89 miles. With its espresso bars, two grocery stores and the Buffalo Run Restaurant, famous for its buffalo, elk, deer and ostrich burgers, Marblemount is also a major stop for river rafting, canoeing or fishing enthusiasts.
RIVER RECREATION
One of the best-kept secrets in the Skagit Valley and one that typifies outdoor recreation on the river is Rasar State Park near Hamilton. Daniel Rasar donated most of the land for the park in order to honor his Skagit County family pioneer heritage.
Rasar State Park offers visitors a perfect opportunity to experience Skagit River up close and natural. Not only is camping available, but a well-marked trail system, including wheelchair access, provides visitors with easy walking to the river. Signage explains that since the last Ice Age, the river has gradually eroded the valley into a series of terraces.
The Skagit River is the third largest river on the West Coast of the contiguous states (after the Columbia and the Sacramento). It is also the largest watershed in the Puget Sound Basin (contains 3,130 square miles) and provides about 20 percent of the water that flows into the Sound or about 10 billion gallons each day. Throughout the year, six species of salmon as well as sea run cutthroat and bull trout pass the park to their spawning grounds.
The carcasses supply food for 150 species of animals including eagles, ospreys, minks, otters and bears. Hungry eagles come here from 1,000 miles distant to feed on chum salmon and as many as 600 eagles feed here, making the Skagit Watershed one of the largest eagle wintering areas in the lower 48 states.
While a pilgrimage to the tulip fields is a must each spring, year round the Skagit Valley holds a host of festivals, activities and outdoor recreation. Whether visitors yearn for world-class shopping, dining, eagle watching, fishing or river rafting, the serene Skagit Valley provides a day or week-long getaway with every sort of pleasure.
SKAGIT VALLEY SPECIAL EVENTS
SKAGIT VALLEY TUPIP FESTIVAL – April
DOWNTOWN MOUNT VERNON STREET FAIR – Mount Vernon – April
LOGGERODEO – Sedro-Woolley – June/July
BERRY DAIRY DAYS – Burlington – July
INDEPENDENCE DAY – Everywhere
HIGHLAND GAMES – Mount Vernon – July
GOOD OLDE DAYS – Concrete – August
SKAGIT COUNTY FAIR – Mount Vernon – August
LA CONNER VINTAGE AND CLASSIC BOAT SHOW FESTIVAL – La Conner – August
SEDRO-WOOLLEY FOUNDERS’ DAY – Sedro-Woolley – September
FESTIVAL OF FAMILY FARMS – Everywhere – October
GREAT PUMPKIN CARVING/SCARECROW CONTEST – La Conner – October
ARTS ALIVE! – La Conner – November
POAT PARADES – Anacortes, La Conner – December
FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS – Stanwood – December
UPPER SKAGIT BALD EAGLE FESTIVAL – Rockport, Concrete – February
How to get there: From Seattle drive north on I-5 about 50 miles.
Information
Skagit Valley Tourism: www.visitskagitvalley.com
Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce: P.O. Box 1007- 117 N. 1st Street, Mount Vernon, WA 98273 (360) 428-8547 Fax (360) 424-6257; www.mountvernonchamber.com.
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival: P.O. Box 1784, Mount Vernon, WA 98273 (360) 428-5959 Fax (360) 428-6753; www.tulipfestival.org.
