Skagit Tulip Festival

The camera is set almost at ground level, low enough that the nearest tulips stand taller than it does and you are looking through the stems rather than down at the field. That is the right height for this: from standing eye level a tulip field is a flat stripe of colour, and from here it is a crowd. The blocks are planted solid and pure - a whole bed of pink on one side, a whole bed of red on the other, each one dozens of rows deep and running out until the individual flowers stop resolving and become a single band. Between the beds the soil is bare, wet and cracked, with the rows dead straight. The sky is flat white overcast from edge to edge, which is what spring in this valley usually looks like, and it is also why the colour reads so hard - there is no sunlight to wash it out and no shadow anywhere.

The Skagit Valley in northwest Washington, 60 miles from Seattle, becomes one of the most brightly colored destinations in the world every spring, when thousands of tulips burst into bloom. The valley has long been a major grower of the flowers, but it’s more recent that it has also become home to one of the best springtime events in the Northwest. In 1984, the Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce inaugurated the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival as an official annual event after realizing people were coming by the thousands to see the fields of colorful tulips in bloom. In 1994, the festival grew so large, it parted ways with the Chamber of Commerce and become its own entity.

When the festival first started, it lasted a mere three days. However, as years passed, it became evident that blooming seasons varied from year to year and prediction wasn’t always accurate. The festival extended from three days to ten days, then again to seventeen days, and finally to the full 30 days of April. This ensures the tulips’ blooming season will land somewhere within the festival—the official festival website even has an interactive map to tell you which fields (and which colors) are in bloom throughout the month.

Nowadays, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival encompasses more than 300 acres of land and hosts more than 1 million visitors every year. Most visitors come from all around the Puget Sound area, including Seattle, though some visitors travel from as far as Holland, considered by many to be the biggest tulip growers in the world.

In addition to the fields of colorful blooms, the festival offers many activities. Art shows and concerts show the culture of the area, while basketball and lacrosse tournaments appeal to active guests. The nearby town of Mount Vernon is a great place to spend time, and the Downtown Mount Vernon Street Fair and the Kiwanis Salmon Barbecue are especially popular, serving as fundraisers for local establishments. Local shellfish harvesters and cheese makers offer tours of their operations. Running enthusiasts enjoy the annual Tulip Run, a 2-mile or 5-mile flat course on gravel trails, which is so memorable that it’s recently been recommended in Runner’s World, while cyclists flock to the Tulip Pedal, an independent 20-, 40-, or 60-mile bicycle route through the area.