Deception Pass Trip/Bucket List Cross-Off Mania, Part II

Bucket List Cross-off #3.1: La Conner

First glimpse. My friend and colleague, Mary, told me about this place - said it was a little town on the water. She loves the water, and so do I. I love the boats.

Here's what I referred to as the "Rainbow Bridge." I just wondered why they chose orange. Maybe it used to be red, and it's just faded? Anyway, I like the unusual color of it and it makes a very pretty picture from the car window. (We had to do some exploring in the car to get to a spot where I could get this angle.)

For the third time in one day, I walked across a bridge for the sole purpose of taking pictures in the middle.

Left: It was a bit glare-y, but you get the point. More pretty pictures!!!

Right: This is the other side - much better photo opp, in terms of composition.

While we were driving through town, we saw a sign for an art show at the Pickle Barn. Those of you who know me know I could write sonnets about pickles. I'll refrain here, and save it for another post, but we decided to do our road trip thing and just go with the flow and check it out.

But we got sidetracked by our own selves, because we saw this:

 And then we saw signs for the Tulip Route. Curious! Especially since all we could see for what seemed like acres and acres were only daffodils! Curiouser! We decided to investigate...so we never actually made it to the Pickle Barn Art Show, which was probably a good thing, because it would have been closed by the time we got there anyway. We returned to La Conner for dinner to finish Bucket List Item: Eat on the water at sunset in La Conner, but first, I will go into excruciating detail about:

 

 Bucket List Cross-Off #4:
Tulip Festival/  Roozengaarde

 I had heard awesome things about the Tulip Festival, but I had never been and it was on my bucket list. So we went!  It was totally awesome. I loved especially that it was spur of the moment.

Above, right: Here is a windmill. Don't worry, there is no Don Quixote in sight who might accidentally run me through with a lance while jousting. I'm not sure that the windmill has any functional purpose except for to make people feel like they're fakey in Holland, but it would be cool if it actually did what windmills are supposed to.

The Roozengaarde, for your information, has been a family-owned business since 1928 or some long time ago like that. They've not parceled it off or anything - instead they've tried to make the best of what they chose to do. And it's clear they love flowers - the grounds are immaculate, even after several hundred people had trompled through that day.

Above: In fine Holland tradition: TULIPS!!!

Right: And also some non-tulips. These didn't really smell a lot but they were really pretty. Plus I thought the picture was kind of cute. :)



For the next part: numbers go L-R, row by row...)


1. Look at the round buds. I don't think I've ever seen buds so round on a tulip!

2. Residence. Makes it sound like an old large English countryside home in H-----shire.

3. Mm. What a lovely peachy lavendery color. I don't know what the real color is called but it was all by itself, surrounded by cream colored ones...made it seem that much more special.


4. White Lion daffodils. I easily resisted buying these. They do look a bit ferocious, but their 'manes' are so heavy that they droop and you can't see the full effect of their glory/brilliance because their heads are too heavy. Basically, these bulbs need some genetic layering in their haircut before I would buy them. They are kind of cute looking anyway though.

5. Next, Double Price (purple) and Monte Carlo. (yellow). Who could resist buying tulip bulbs with names like that? I did. Mostly because I don't have anywhere to plant them

Impromptu sillier than necessary ditty:

oh, how the glare the sun provides maketh me to squint

reflecting off the water in an intense near-white tint*

I look upon the flowers here, in all their springtime splendor

if plucked and given to a love, they are a good fight mender. 

*I know 'tint' doesn't really go here, but hey, it's poetry. Bad poetry, but poetry nonetheless.

6. For some unknown reason, I like this picture of myself. So I decided to share it with you. The purple color in the second "row" behind me is called Woodstock.


7. I have no idea what kind of bush/tree thing this is, but its flowers were super pretty.

Side note: Wish I had a DSLR for moments like this one!








8. This is the Aladdin, as you can see. I've never seen a tulip that opened like this one. Maybe because I'd never seen a tulip that had spiky petals before. Ridj called them "fire tulips." He likes red and multicolored tulips are his favorite, so these were tied for first place in his Tulip Book.

9. Patch of Aladdins. 






10. Like I said before, Ridj likes multi-colored tulips. He proclaimed these his most favorite, tied with Aladdins.


11. More multi-colored tulips. Zurel by name. I think they have too much white in them.

Also, as a side note, I have never seen a blue tulip. There are plenty of blue flowers - why not tulips?!?



12. Princess Irene. So cute! My coworkers sent me a flower arrangement for my birthday, and there were some blue things that are by the Princesses in the bouquet. A week and a half later, I can tell you they have a beautiful drying pattern.

13. More daffodil fields!

14. Me and Ridj in front of some tulips. Classic coloration. Names not known.

15. The thing I think is so awesome about these is that the stems are reddish. I am not sure it shows up in the actual photo, but they were so lovely and delicate - blushing, almost.

16. Green and purple college! This one's for you, Dad. Also, I didn't know that tulips could be so short and squatty...or have such purple tones to their foliage. 

17. Pheasant Eye. I have never actually been close enough to a pheasant to know if this is what its eye looks like. You know how I feel about birds, so I'm not even sure that I want to even be close enough to a pheasant eye to figure it out. Maybe not even in a picture. (Okay, that's a bit extreme...) I really do like the bright 'pop' of the centre though.

I must admit that I kept half-expecting it (the flower) to start making bird-like eeping and rustling noises. But it's a flower, so it didn't satisfy my brain's overactive desire to integrate flora and fauna on this occasion. Phew.

(It would have been a bit awkward if it had. Maybe that's a great fantasy kid book - the princess pheasant that turns into a flower and has to wait for the prince to look past the thornless roses to appreciate her, but it's hard because her season is early and all the princes in her country start their proverbial princess-hunting late in the season.)




18. If this photograph were in an art show, I would dub it, "Study of Blurry Upside Down Flowers, Blue, #1". It did seem weird that all the flowers were facing ground-ward--a little self-defeating. How would the bees and everything else pollenate? Maybe that job is left to the ants? I don't know of any ants that purposefully pollenate. Please, by all means, fix my ignorance if you know of some ant species that I do not.

Bucket List Cross-off #3.2: La Conner

We decided to go to dinner along the water. We drove down the one main street in La Conner (it really is an uber touristy place, and it was so strange that at six o'clock on a Saturday night there were only two or three places open), and parked, which would be totally uninteresting except there was a helicopter randomly sitting about fifty feet from us. It started up, and you can see that its propeller is definitely in motion.


Here, you can see that the back half thingie is definitely spinning too. Made for  an awesome picture, but also made me think of Indiana Jones. Only the yellow of this helicopter is more friendly than a Nazi twin-prop.

Then it took off. I admit I didn't actually see it leave the ground because it flung dust in my eye (what I thought of in my Sting* blog post earlier) and so I had to squint. So this is as fast as I could react, and it was already winging its way back to Seattle. It was tiny! It fit maybe three people.

This is me with a really really red tree. The color of it was so striking that I asked Ridj to stop so I could have a photo op.

We had dinner on the water. There were a few choices, but most of them were super seafood-y, which Ridj was fine with, but I was not.

Rating: 4 stars. We had dinner at the pub/bar/whatever place--anyone who has been to La Conner knows which one I'm talking about...the one with the pool tables on the right as you walk in. Anyway, the waitress was so nice. We got the clam chowder as an appetizer, and I had lemon chicken.  He got the Saturday Night Specal - ribeye with garlic bread, a salad, and baked potato for $13.99. Everything was flavorful, the salad was real, the dressings were house-made, and it was just all-around yum. It's one of those places that the locals all go and hang out - which makes for interesting people-watching.

(He didn't know he was going to be in the picture - he thought the picture was only going to be the food, which is why he isn't looking and me and smiling his "I'm about to eat!" smile.)

Here I am, smiling my cheesy "I'm really tired and hungry" smile. Complete with half-raised eyebrow. So my style. And with that, you have now come to:

THE END

...of this post.