[Adapted from email travelogue, sent Sunday, April 12 at 6:37 p.m.]

Garden Rosalyn

The same four of us who went to Whidbey Island three weeks ago went on another day trip this weekend—this time to Skagit Valley for the Tulip Festival, which lasts through the month of April every year. Ivan had never been, and Alexia estimated she had been two or three times before but not in a couple of decades. I, on the other hand, have now gone to it fourteen times, since the first time I went in 1999. Shobhit and I now go nearly every year, and this was his twelfth time.

Garden Rosalyn is the newer one of the major tulip farms with ticketed entry, still not quite as elaborate, not nearly as popular, and not quite as expensive as either Roozengaarde or Tulip Town. We all left Seattle in Alexia's car at about 8 a.m., so not only was Garden Rosalyn never as packed as the other places, but it was nearly empty when we got there shortly after 9 a.m. The other places may be more popular but this one is still plenty photogenic (as you can plainly see) and never overrun with huge crowds.

Granted, it was a very drizzly day, which would have cut down on the crowds everywhere—especially on the roads. If it had been warm and sunny, it would have taken us far longer to get through the area.

I love this shot Alexia took of Shobhit and me standing amongst the tulips.

Shobhit in Yellow Tulips. Compare to this shot, taken 20 years ago, at the 2006 Tulip Festival.

This was taken from the side of the road near a field blocked from public access. I had to use a bit of the zoom to keep a dirt road path between the tulips and me out of the shot. And you know what? This shot turned out far better than I expected.

Little Mountain Park

After Shobhit's requisite, annual stops at Christianson's Nursery (where Shobhit bought several plant starts, and a lady earnestly told Alexia in the bathroom it's is one of the best nurseries in the country) and Schuh Farms (where we bought some more plants, a fresh loaf of bread, some delicious mini pies, and I finally found a pair of tulip earrings to replace the original pair I had and loved but lost a piece of maybe five years ago), we went to a very cool place in Mount Vernon that we hadn't gone to since 2021, and which neither Alexia or Ivan had been to before: Little Mountain Park.

It has views of Skagit Valley from roughly 900 feet above it, from both a South Viewpoint and a North Viewpoint—the latter of which is seen from a "paraglider styled platform" installed in 2004.

As already noted, it was a drizzly day, so the views weren't as great as they could have been—but the misty clouds also gave the views a pretty cool vibe all their own.

Group selfie on the North Viewpoint platform!

BONUS! Sunday, April 12: Dune Peninsula, Point Defiance Park, Tacoma

I recently read all six of the Frank Herbert Dune novels, between May 2024 and December 2025, and I only learned in the middle of reading them that not only was Frank Herbert from Tacoma, but Dune Peninsula at Point Defiance Park was named for him in 2019, when the former copper smelter site was reopened as part of the park.

So! Today I took the bus down to Tacoma to meet up with Tracy so we could go and check it out. It's very cool, with many direct references to Frank Herbert and to Dune, including a sculpture of sandworms. This portion of the park opened 54 years after the original Dune novel was published, and two years before Denis Villeneuve's Dune Part One opened in theaters. I decide to ride one of the sandworms, so you could see that they are clearly not to scale. Someone call Denis!

Side note: across the marina water between Dune Peninsula and the mainland of Point Defiance Park can be found "Chutes and Ladders," a series of six slides on alternating sides of staircases up to a pedestrian bridge over the Vashon Ferry lanes. Tracy and I worked together to get videos of me sliding down them all, both

from my perspective:

and from her vantage point at the bottom:

I had to climb that damned staircase three times, though, because it was crawling with children who wouldn't get the hell out of my way, so after I climbed the first time, I walked back to the bottom to hang with Tracy until the children dispersed. When they finally did, we both recorded on our respective phones as I slid down the first time—or so we thought; Tracy discovered she had accidentally taken video the last couple seconds of my descent. So, I went up again so she could record this time, which worked out better anyway as this time her footage did not show me holding my camera the whole way down. I have to tell you though, running between all those slides on the way down is surprisingly quite the workout. Or maybe I'm just about to turn fifty. Stay tuned for more photos of that in a couple of weeks!

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and Dune Peninsula 2026

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