Bluegrass and Shakespeare... or not!

One Saturday morning at the end of August, we headed across the border with Angharad for a blissful overnight trip to Whidbey Island.  The plan for Saturday included going to a bluegrass festival at the Meerkirk Gardens, and then seeing a free outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Lunch at Calico Cupboard in Mt Vernon

Here are some photos we took at the peaceful Meerkirk Gardens as we meandered our way towards the distant strains of bluegrass music...

Once we reached the music, we realised that "festival" may have been a bit of an overstatement.  There were three bands playing throughout the day, one at a time.... and no queues for the site's three port-a-loos!  Anyway, it was a pleasant setting and we listened to most of the second band's set before deciding it was time to hit the road again if we wanted to have time to purchase the makings of a picnic dinner before the Shakespeare performance.

The band and the crowd

18 week photo

After getting ourselves picnic-ready, we headed to the outdoor performance venue, arriving only to find cardboard signs and sympathetic volunteers advising us that the evening's performance was already full. They'd had hundreds more people show up than they expected and were now turning carloads more away. Even our sob story of driving all the way from Canada was to no avail!

Anyway, we drove to a nearby beach - the same one we had eaten at with Kelly, Janae and Etta a month earlier - and enjoyed our picnic dinner there instead, watching cruise ships pass by and happy dogs frolic on the sand.

That night we stayed at a Dutch-themed motel in Oak Harbor, and on Sunday morning we had a hearty breakfast at a typical American diner down the road.

Our motel

Low-fat breakfast...?

After breakfast, we followed some of the locals to a meeting back on the mainland at Anacortes, and had lunch with them afterwards at their favourite Chinese restaurant.

That afternoon we drove home again, having had a slightly different kind of weekend to what we had anticipated, but a very nice one nonetheless!

Mt Vernon weekend, Post 1: Tulip Festival

Last weekend, Angharad, Ben and I headed to Mt Vernon, WA to catch up with Donna and Terry. It was our first road trip in our new car.

On Friday night we crossed the border into the US, a process that took 1.5 hours and involved Angharad almost being arrested for telling a border guard that she was ripping our car apart because she was "looking for a needle" (in fact a darning needle that she had dropped down the side of the seat)! Then we stopped for a scrumptious dinner at our favourite restaurant in Bellingham: La Fiamma Wood Fire Pizza.

We reached Donna and Terry's home around 10:30pm and spent a while chatting with them and Kelly, Janae and Etta, who were also spending the weekend.

On Saturday morning, Angharad, Ben and I set off to see the tulip fields: we had timed our visit to coincide with the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (which Angharad and I also went to last year). We didn't go into any of the tulip farms, and ran out of time to go to the street fair like we had originally intended, but we did have fun admiring the vivid fields of tulips as we pootled around the area. As you can see, a LOT of other people were doing likewise!

Tulip traffic

Daffodils

Someone's yard

A barn

Another barn

And yet another barn

The roadside

Lonely?

Llamas

Kites

Barn and kites

Did I mention that I love American barns?

Cyclists checking their "bloom map" at a roundabout

Mt Baker towering over the scene

Love this - looks like she's inspecting a mural!

Crates

So much for the above sign...

Donkey

Helicopter tour over the tulip fields

Click here to see more tulip photos in our Picasa album.

After lunch at the Chuck Wagon Drive-In in Mt Vernon, it was time to head back to Donna and Terry's place to get ready for Etta's 2nd birthday party, which was combined with her cousin Jacqueline's 9th birthday party!

To be continued...

VanDusen Festival of Lights

On December 15th, Delle and I went to the Festival of Lights at the VanDusen Gardens in Vancouver.  We had attempted to go another night but had arrived to find such long line-ups that we had driven away.  This time we arrived really early, beat the rush, and had a lovely time wandering around the gardens before it got too busy.

We oohed and aahed at the millions of twinkling lights, listened to Christmas carols, watched the performance of some amusing gnomes with very fake German accents, drank hot apple cider, munched on kettle corn, and generally had a very nice time!

These photos were taken on my little digital camera and definitely can't do it justice.  In real life the lights were absolutely magical!