Hello, Yellow: The La Conner Daffodil Festival

March 9, 2015 Comments Off read Attractions, Pacific, The Great Outdoors, Travel, USA, Washington, West

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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Spotted on the Roadside: A Rocket to Saturn

March 6, 2015 Comments Off read Pacific, Spotted on the Roadside, Travel, USA, Washington, West

As is only right and proper for “the center of the universe”, there’s a rocket smack in the middle of the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. Built from military surplus and originally displayed next to a surplus store in Belltown, the rocket launched to Fremont when its former location was scheduled for demolition in 1991. For the next three years, the rocket lay dormant in a back lot. There was a failed attempt to erect it in 1993, and it wasn’t until 1994 that it was finally reassembled in its current location. The rocket is branded with Fremont’s crest and motto (“De Libertas Quirkas” or “Freedom to be Peculiar”) and for a time, one was able to feed a coin into it and “launch” the rocket with a burst of steam from the bottom. That function is no longer operational and it appears there are no plans to restore it. At one time, there were plans to turn the rocket into a local FM radio station, but they have either been put on hold or abandoned entirely.

Twenty years later, across the street, a developer with roots in Fremont installed a giant fiberglass Saturn on top of his commercial building for the cost of about $25,000. That is some damn expensive whimsy! It’s not just decorative, however–Saturn has solar panels installed on its rings which feed into the building’s electrical grid and allow the planet to glow brightly as another integral element of Fremont’s weird galaxy.

Spotted on Evanston Ave, Seattle, WA.

Spotted on the Roadside: When Life Gives You The World’s Largest Lemon…

February 27, 2015 Comments Off read Attractions, California, Pacific, Spotted on the Roadside, Travel, USA, West

I try not to go anywhere with preconceived notions about what it will be like, because that road leads to disappointment nearly always. With the giant lemon in Lemon Grove, however, it was almost impossible to not imagine the lemon in front of a literal grove of thousands of blossoming lemon trees, wafting their scent out into the sunshine. I may have also pictured a lemon farmer selling cool, refreshing glasses of lemonade nearby. So needless to say, my vision could not have been more wrong if I was James Van Praagh trying to cold read. The Lemon Grove lemon is a metro lemon, flanking both the trolley and the bus stop, and if you’re looking for refreshment, you can buy a pack of smokes at the shop across the street. There were some lemon trees behind it, though, because even your average shitty psychic gets lucky once in a while. Lemon Grove’s lemon was originally built as a parade float for San Diego’s 4th of July parade in 1928. In 1930, it was plastered and has proudly proclaimed Lemon Grove’s slogan for 85 years: Best Climate on Earth. The town wasn’t incorporated until 1977, however, so clearly the paint job has been updated at some point during that time period. Nowadays, Lemon Grove is more notable for being the place where some stolen mummies were stashed in a garage for over a decade than lemon trees, but the giant lemon remains as a testament to the town’s roots.

Spotted on Main Street in Lemon Grove, CA.