14.04.2012 – 14.04.2012  16 °C

Usual start time this morning with the plan that we would spend our day checking out the tulip festival in the neighbouring islands and surrounds. Tulips were brought to this part of Washington state by the Dutch after the Second World War and apparently this area of America produces more tulips than anywhere else in the world outside of the Netherlands.

It probably took us 30min to get to the tulip growing areas and we could tell as soon as we arrived that we were in the right spot! You could see coloured squares for as far as the eye could see! Squares of yellow (which are actually daffodils not tulips), reds, oranges, pinks, purples.. you name it you can pretty much see it! Really picturesque.

From tulip heaven, we went for a drive out to one of the neighbouring islands to see the sea side town of Anacortez. The town is also celebrating the Tulip festival so we joined the locals with a coffee and a tasty treat and wandered thru their farmer’s markets. After morning tea, M&D decided to have a look on board an old steam boat that used to work the Sound, whilst I read some info in the local museum. This part of the US was opened up to the settler’s primarily as a timber supply for the growing colonies in California. The easiest way to get timber to market was to float it down the Sound to Seattle for shipping to California. Obviously the more timber you float down the waterways the harder they are to navigate, so many people and ships were employed to keep the Sound navigable.

We had decided earlier in the day that we would head for La Conner (another sea side town) for lunch and to see the Tulip parade, so after seeing the steam boat we drove another half an hour to La Conner. La Conner is a quintessential American town.. Lots of houses and shops on main street that are all painted up with their porches.. I’m sure you can picture the sort of town I mean! The town is now quite an artsy community so most of the shops are small boutiques and galleries. We are really fortunate today because it is a lovely sunshiny day, so we pulled up a patch of pavement and got ready to watch the town turn out for its Tulip parade. The parade is open to anyone so everything from cheerleaders to corvettes was in existence! Disappointingly, the local marching band was not in attendance so we didn’t get to see the ‘real’ American pageantry of a parade!

Lunch was really good! We went to a sea food restaurant on the Sound. Out on the porch, Sound sparkling in the sun, consuming a really tasty Clam Chowder… pretty much heavenly! Top it off with seeing a couple of Bald Eagles circling above, and you have pretty much the perfect end to a pretty fantastic day here in NW Washington State! Off to Portland, Oregon tomorrow!

Song of the Day– Prince, Little Red Corvette