Category Attractions

When I Grow Up, I’m Going to Bovine University: The Mattress Ranch in Bremerton, WA

I plugged a quarter into their chucklin chicken, and the employee told me I’d need to shake it to get it to work. I took that as an invitation to hulk out and accidentally knocked the chicken right off the top. Whoops! The chicken suffered no lasting harm. My embarrassment has lingered.

Most of the time, a roadside attraction is the business in and of itself. In the case of Mattress Ranch, the roadside attraction was built to support the business. I first drove past Mattress Ranch on my trip to Forks and had intended to stop on my way back, but by then it was too dark for photos and the store was closed. This time, there was an epic backup at the ferry I planned on taking, so in lieu of waiting, I decided to drive around the peninsula instead, the existence of Mattress Ranch tickling the back of my mind. I STILL almost drove right past it again, turning across two lanes of traffic to get into their lot.

After taking photos of the lot, I ventured inside to avail myself of their restroom and see if there was anyone who could answer my questions about the place. As it turned out, one of the employees on site had worked there on and off for the last twenty years and was more than happy to tell me all about the origins of the attraction attached to the store. As it turns out, Mattress Ranch isn’t one store, but a chain of stores in Alaska, Washington, and now Arizona. It feels weird to me to post about a chain store, but then again,  this place isn’t exactly Target. Originally, they had a few black and white cows outside, but after the paint started to flake, they decided to spice them up a little, and they haven’t looked back since. Every year, the menagerie out front grows, and so does their commitment to the community, even using 25% of their commercial air time to support charities and other local businesses. I don’t know what it is about strutting around a mattress factory, waving a fistful of money and talking about his cow of a wife and pig of a daughter in law, but I dig this guy’s vibe. He proves, once again, that local commercials are the best commercials.

The Battle in Seattle: Pillow Fight Edition

This past Saturday was International Pillow Fight Day, a day to gather with your fellow humans  and pummel the hell out of each other. Like the Seattle Cardboard Tube Duels, the mayhem went down in Cal Anderson Park. The rules were simple: bring your own pillow, and try not to hit anyone with a camera. Face shots? Acceptable. Groin shots? Acceptable. Ganging up on Pikachu? Acceptable. Unlike the cardboard tube fight, the kids were super into pillow fighting. I saw one girl run by, her face twisted with concentration, screaming “GET HIM!” with almost primal fury. It was like Lord of the Flies out there.

I split my time between taking photos and engaging in tactical pillow warfare. It was a strangely uplifting experience, raining blows down upon others and having them returned in kind. There was a lot of concern before the event about the post-battle cleanup, but from what I saw, the pillows held up really well so there wasn’t much to clean up. And all of the pillows in good shape were donated to Compass Housing Alliance afterward!

Hello, Yellow: The La Conner Daffodil Festival

I took a few more pictures with my old-timey lens and I still don’t know if I like it. Maybe I need to get better at photography in general before I start farting around with toys.

Put a fat bird on it, spruce it up, make it pretty!

My most recent bee-bothering

I’ve been to the tulip festival in Mount Vernon a few times, and while I was aware that earlier in the season there were also fields of irises and daffodils, I hadn’t actually made the trek to go see them until this year. I think that’s the case with a lot of people, as La Conner has recently dubbed the period before the tulips as the official daffodil festival in the effort to extend the flower tourism season. If you plant them, they will come…unless they don’t know about it.

As it turns out, Roozengaarde (the place where you can actually go and buy tulips during the tulip festival) plants more acres of daffodils than tulips–100 acres more! And as a bonus, before the tulips have bloomed, you can easily park in their lot and walk through their gardens for free. Admission is normally $5 so it’s not like you’re saving a ton of money, but it is a handy place to walk through if you want to take some selfies in front of a field of daffodils with Mount Baker in the distance. The effect of so many yellow flowers is undeniably cheery (try to deny it! I dare you!). It’s like spring up and slapped you in the eyeballs in the nicest way possible.

If you want to experience the daffodil festival, they’re holding some events through the month of March, including The Dandy Daffodil Tweed Bike Ride & Picnic which sounds delightful. Plus it’s late enough in the month that you’ll be bicycling around tulips as well!

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