This past Saturday we went to see the tulips in the Skagit valley. Skagit County is the largest producer of daffodils and tulips in the U.S. (75% of commercial production is here in about 500 acres). This was the first weekend of the festival so we expected major crowds and decided to go very early to avoid them. Unfortunately, my wife misread the opening time of the largest gardens and field so we were over an hour early. Back when I first started going to the festival, you could just park on the side of the road and walk into the fields. Now they don’t allow roadside parking anywhere and you need to pay to get into any of the fields. We were so early we had to take the guerilla route and I went to an area I knew we could safely park and check out the daffodil fields. The daffodils come out first and they were at their peak, the tulips were just starting to come out. We found a field near my wife’s favorite nursery (that thankfully also wasn’t open yet) so we parked there and walked on the road near a tulip field. It was too far and muddy to get into but provided a great view of Mt. Baker.

We next drove down the road and saw a photographer with a very large lens on the side of the road shooting into a muddy field of white. The white was not flowers but thousands of snow geese. We pulled over and I jumped out with my large lens with the hope of getting a good shot of the geese in front of Mt. Baker or in front of the flower fields.

The geese were in multiple fields but a farmer in one field was apparently not happy about the uninvited visitors and was driving an ATV with his dog running behind him chasing the birds out of his field.

They kept coming in waves as the ATV got to each area where a group was resting.

They were mostly chased to the original field I saw the photographer waiting so I snapped a few quick shots before the farmer turned his attention towards where the photographer’s car was parked illegally on his land & our car was parked on the side of the road. I could tell he was heading our way to yell at us.

That was the most snow geese I have ever seen in one place and quite the show. I really need a bigger lens to shoot birds but was pretty happy with the shots. We continued on our way to the main pay to enter field. They had opened early but we didn’t realize it so took our time walking to the paid entrance. On the way there we saw some amazing alpacas in the next door field.

I’m going to save the field and garden pics for another post so this doesn’t get too large with too many pictures, maybe on Sunday or sooner. In any case, I hope you enjoyed our distraction and pregame pics.