Skagit Valley Tulips Looking At Mount Baker With Chris & Sheila

I saw that which you see above on Facebook, this morning, via the "You know you're from Anacortes when..." Facebook page.

It is the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival time of the year. During the month of the festival more than a million visitors descend on the Skagit Flats to view the flowers and visit the various Tulip venues. On weekends this creates epic traffic jams.

I have not been in the Skagit Valley whilst the tulips are blooming since April of 2006. Since that time a Jones Family Compound has been established on Beaver Marsh Road, near the Roozen Garde epicenter of the Tulip Festival.

A couple months ago the elder Jones Boy told me I could stay in one of the unoccupied houses in the Jones Family Compound if I wanted to visit the valley during Tulip time. This seemed tempting, but I am not quite ready to resume flying, yet.

The past couple days I have been seeing non-Tulip photos of the Skagit Valley zone, on Facebook, via the Washingtonians known and Chris and Sheila. Chris and Sheila have been at the RV Park at the Swinomish Casino Resort.

The Swinomish are one of the Skagit Valley's Native America tribes. The Skagit tribe also has a casino resort. I do not know if the Samish tribe have built a casino since I left living in the valley. My favorite buffet whilst living in Washington was the one found at the Skagit Casino.

One of the Chris and Sheila photos showed me that Mount Baker is back fully covered in white. During last year's drought Mount Baker, and the other Washington volcanoes lost most of their snow covers.

At the above location we are looking east. Anacortes is behind us. To the right are the Skagit Flats, where one finds the Tulips. The town I grew up in, Burlington, is on the other side of that slight hill you see in the middle of the photo, covered with trees. Mount Vernon, the town I lived in before moving to Texas, is to the right a couple miles.

This view of Mount Baker gives on an inkling as to why it might be a bit problematic if Mount Baker decides to erupt again. The last time Mount Baker blew its top was back in the 1860s, if I am remembering correctly.

Back when Mount St. Helens went active and eventually blew up, Mount Baker also got active, blowing off way more steam than it usually blows. It got bad enough that all the recreational land around Mount Baker was closed til the mountain calmed down.

A volcano blowing up is one thing I do not need to worry about at my current mountain free zone location. Today all I have to worry about is keeping cool with the outer world temperature going into the 90s...