The Valley in Spring — a stop on Chuckanut Drive.
If you are driving this in April, you may already have noticed that the fields are doing something extraordinary.
The Skagit Valley is one of the largest tulip-growing regions outside the Netherlands, and for a few weeks in early spring the flat fields south of here turn into solid blocks of red, yellow and purple running to the horizon with snow-capped mountains behind them. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors and creates traffic that locals plan their month around.
The flowers are, slightly counterintuitively, a by-product — the growers are mainly producing BULBS, and the blooms get topped off so the plant puts its energy underground. So the spectacle exists because of an agricultural necessity, not for tourism.
Daffodils come first in March, tulips in April, irises later. The exact timing shifts every year with the weather, and there is a bloom map published each season.
Outside spring the fields are still worth looking at — potatoes, cabbage seed, and in winter, flooded ground covered in snow geese.
Either way, we are into the last few miles now.