Tulips and Hail

Today my GF and I took our annual trip north to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I wrote about our previous trip here.

Usually by now the tulips are in full bloom and the daffodils are dead. This spring, though, has been unusually cool so the daffodils were still in full bloom and the tulips were just coming in. There weren't the wide swaths of brilliant color in the fields that we've seen in years past, but it was still a great day with plenty to see and experience.

A key element of the Tulip Festival is the annual Downtown Mt Vernon Street Fair.

I'm a sucker for a street fair. I love browsing the different booths. There's the local photo booth, the hammock booth, the soap booth, the leather goods booth, the windmill booth, and all the other regulars that sell their wares at every fair in the State of Washington. You've probably seen them all at other fairs, too.

Instead of pleasant spring air with a slight chill to it, we got hail. And the hail storm seemed to last for about a half hour. It was cold, hard, and copious. I don’t recall the last time I saw a storm like this. We got slammed with it.

Naturally, we cut our street fair time short, but despite that annoyance, the storm was fascinating and beautiful.










A short drive took us out of the storm and on to the tulip fields. We headed to the Roozengaarde garden to pick up souvenirs and, of course, spend some time with the flowers.

Roozengaarde is a more formal way of viewing tulips than tromping about in the open fields. We, however, were pretty much done with weather at this point, and opted to skip the open fields and instead spend time in the garden.

The flowers were as beautiful as ever. And the day's precipitation left the delicate petals covered with rain drops.

It also gave me an opportunity to play with the zoom/macro lens I got for Christmas.

It's probably pretty obvious, but I haven't done any Photoshop work on these pictures. There are a few reasons for that .

1. I prefer the "natural" look
2. I don't have Photoshop skills
3. I don't have Photoshop
4. I'm lazy.

You can see more of my Tulip Festival Pictures here.

The Tulip Festival is always worth the trip. And though the official events are slowly wrapping up, the tulips are just now waking up to welcome visitors.