Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Return Visit

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival Takeaways for Summer, Fall & Winter

Will you be one of the hundreds of thousands of people will visit the Skagit Valley in April for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival? We hope so – as one of Washington State’s most popular destination events, and a much-loved month for getaway vacations to La Conner, you’ll be treated to acres and acres of brightly colored tulips, display gardens that are simply stunning, and photo opportunities around every corner. In 2012 alone, the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival greeted visitors from nearly all 50 states and from 53 countries!

While La Conner is the center of all the Tulip (and, ahem, daffodil) Festival fun – we also know that year-round, there are not many valleys quite as beautiful as the Skagit Valley – and there certainly are even fewer valleys as gorgeous as ours is when the sun is out, the fields are ablaze with color and snow-covered Mount Baker offers a perfect backdrop.

We have a saying here in La Conner … “Once you visit, we know you’ll be back!” And it’s true – our visitors love to come back again and again because they know that once the fields of flowers are through blooming, our ‘seasons’ are just getting started.

Our spring bulb crops of daffodils, tulips and irises pave the way for summer fields of lush crops of truck-garden vegetables – potato plants with beautiful little purple blossoms, row upon row of gorgeous cabbages, corn and berries … farmers markets, produce stands and restaurants sourcing their ingredients fresh from our local growers.  Take a drive or bike ride through the valley and observe close to a hundred crop identification signs each featuring the name of the crop.

Summer gradually shifts to Fall, when the fields of green turn to orange as our farmers finish out their season with fall crops of pumpkins, squash and beets, and our Festival of Family Farms weekend brings out the crowds for hay rides and pumpkin patches, giant pumpkin contests and cider making.

From Fall we shift into the Holiday Season and fresh-cut Christmas trees.

Before you know it, we’re headed into Winter and our famous Snow Geese and Trumpeter Swans.  You have about 16,700 acres of Skagit Wildlife Area to birdwatch. Many of these acres are adjacent to Skagit Bay, between the mouths of the north and south forks of the glacier-fed Skagit River, the second largest in the state.

© Mark Harrison/Seattle Times

Learn about how our family farms provide a home for birds in our beautiful Skagit Delta.

What’s next? You guessed it … March La Conner Daffodil Festival, April tulips and May Irises!

Skagit County maintains one of the largest and most diverse agricultural communities west of the Cascade mountain range. Agriculture is the No. 1 industry in Skagit County. Local farmers produce about $261 million worth of crops, livestock, and dairy products on 93,000 acres of land. Over 90 different crops are grown in the County. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, tulips, daffodils, pickling cucumbers, specialty potatoes, Jonagold apples, green peas, and vegetable seed are some of the more important crops in this maritime valley. More tulip, iris, and daffodil bulbs are produced here than in any other county in the U.S.

Come visit us for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, then come back every season and enjoy the beauty of our landscape.  We promise that you’ll absolutely love La Conner any time of the year!

Whether you’re coming to La Conner and the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival to see our fabulous fields of daffodils and tulips, or to experience La Conner any time of the year, call or stop the La Conner Visitor’s Center. Our awesome volunteers and staff can give you lots of information – including directions, brochures and maps. 511 Morris St. in La Conner; 360/466-4778 – info@laconnerchamber.com