For my birthday this year, I asked to drive up to the Skagit Valley to check out the tulips, then have my birthday dinner at a seafood restaurant near the marina in Anacortes. It was a perfect day for that drive, even though we didn’t see many tulips! We really don’t like to pay big bucks to park at the big commercial tulip farms, so we just drove around to see what we could see.

Some views of the valley from a hillside on the west side. Not much color in those fields.

We had a nice walk through downtown LaConner, and along the boardwalk on the Swinomish Channel. There were the usual assortment of boats tied up along the channel, and some traffic bucking the rapid outgoing tide. The boat below was being drawn sideways by the tide as it made its way up the channel.

How about this funny guy?

Then, we drove over Highway 20 to Anacortes. We stopped at a “viewpoint” near Fidalgo Bay, but there wasn’t much to see due to all the trees! We did see this huge section of a Douglas Fir log, indicating how the old-growth forest was cut down a long time ago.

When we got into town, we parked near the restaurant, and walked down by the marina to see the boats, and boy were there boats!!

We liked both of these motor boats. The one on the right is a Nordic Tug, and they are very spacious inside. That would make a great vacation boat that could go most anywhere in Puget Sound and the Straits of Juan de Fuca that separates the US from Vancouver Island, See the boat BEHIND the blue one on the left?

Even the garbage cans at the marina were out of the ordinary.

All together, a very fine birthday.