An Hour North of Seattle in the Skagit Valley, Tulip Magic is Coming

It's spring once again and its arrival is always bittersweet if you ask me. About an hour north of Seattle, in the Skagit Valley, the fields are slowly bursting forth into a riot of color. Blooming Daffodils stretch as far as the eye can see and the tulips won't be far behind. It's time for people that love this sort of thing to dust off their cameras and find the boots that they don't mind getting muddy. The colors of the Skagit Valley come in waves. The Daffodils come first, and just as their time grows short, the tulips burst forth in a sea of color that truly is breathtaking if you are a flower lover.

Last year, I stood in the middle of the fields as they were in full bloom looking towards Mount Baker in the distance when something magical happened. A gentle breeze began to stir the tulips that were so far away from me that I could see only the colors, but not the details of the individual flowers themselves. I watched the pool of color stir back and forth as if an invisible artist's brush were slowly being drawn across the field. The breeze hadn't reached me yet, so I couldn't feel it in my hair or on my skin, I could see it silently approaching me as the colors slowly swayed and mixed with one another in the distance. Eventually the breeze reached me, rushing over my skin and through my hair and I heard the whisper as it rushed through the flowers all around me. I got what I came for and then some.

I hear a lot of people say that they stay away because they don't want to have to deal with crowds. I admit that I had lived in Seattle for 10 years before I finally decided that I would go to see what it was all about. I'm glad I went. There were a lot of people at Roozengaarde, it's true, but I never felt crowded. I was standing in the middle of a thousand acres of tulips. It was beautiful. Is it everything I thought it was going to be? Yes and no. Yes, it was beautiful, and no, it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. I had the same experience at Mount Rushmore though, so it's a very individual thing I'm sure. One thing is certain, if you want to go and see it, you should start making your plans soon. The tulip fields are starting to show color and will be very colorful in the coming weeks. I would recommend visiting Roozengaarde's Web site to get information and directions if you are interested. They also have bloom maps that you can look at to determine when you would like to go. Just so you know, you don't have to visit the "official" site, you can simply drive around and meander through the roads that surround the fields and take in the sights without having to deal with parking or paying the $5-$7. It's a beautiful area.

If you were waiting for the bittersweet part of it all, that is because the tens of thousands of snow geese that migrated into the Skagit Valley will be leaving until their journey brings them back next winter. You can still see snow geese and trumpeter swans right now, but their numbers are continually decreasing as they fly north.