Tulip Festival 2019

Apr 18, 2019 | RV | 1 comment

Our first trip to the tulip festival

The Tulip Festival 2019: Well, it was finally time to travel to northwest Washington for the annual Skagit Valley tulip festival. We wanted to drive the scenic back roads and chose US-2. The plan was to travel to Leavenworth for an overnight stay at Icicle River RV Resort. The park (not a resort) is old style, but the sites on the river are quite good, alternating between motor home and trailer sites so you need not look at someone else’s utilities. Diesel was $3.08 at Safeway, and $3.29 or higher everywhere else.

Overnighter at Fidalgo Bay RV Resort in Anacortes

The next morning we continued west on US-2, then up SR-9 ending up in Anacortes at Fidalgo Bay RV Resort. Also not really a “resort”, it was a nice park and right on the water. As Cheri was checking in, she noticed that the left rear wheel and tire had lost it’s grease cap and grease was all over the wheel and tire, and was leaning quite a bit. US-2 was really bad in spots, and put undue stress on everything, including the truck. We called in a mobile RV repair service and he told us that we were lucky the wheel did not fall off.

Heading out to the tulip fields

The next day we leisurely rose, had breakfast of eggs and bacon, and then went to the RoozenGaarde tulip farm where the flowers were stunning! Plenty of pictures at that location in our album. When it became too crowded we started the 25 mile trip toward Coupeville for Penn Cove mussels at the Front Street Grill. The mussels were the best I have ever eaten. Cheri had the traditional white wine broth, and I had Mussels Rockefeller, which was still a broth. It was so good we planned to go the next day as well.

On our last full day we started at Tulip Town which was nice, but not as good as RoozenGaarde. However, the flowers were still beautiful, and this was the place where we saw all the impressive kites. Like the prior day, we headed toward Coupeville, but this time planned to take pictures at the high bridge, Rosario Beach, and Desperation Pass Park. Again we went to the Front Street Grill and both had Mussels Rockefeller this time. On both days we barely missed a chance to see a gray whale that was cruising the cove!

Final thoughts

This was a very nice trip, but US-2 is not suitable for our RV so next time we will choose another route. As I write, our trailer is in Mount Vernon at a repair shop awaiting parts that are difficult to find, It might take up to five weeks to get the trailer repaired.