My Retirement Lifestyle

Glorious tulips

As far as the eye can see

A glimpse of heaven

A couple of years ago, I viewed a segment about the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival on the CBS Sunday Morning show. To say I was captivated would be an understatement. I immediately added the annual tulip festival to my travel bucket list.

As I learned more about the festival on their website, I recalled a friend telling me about a Japanese festival in Vancouver, Canada. Upon looking into that, I discovered that the annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, along with its annual Sakura Days Japanese Fair dates coincided with the tulip festival,which led to planning an epic vacation to the Pacific Northwest in April of 2024.

Our first travel destination was Vancouver, BC, where we stayed for four nights at the Blue Horizon, a lovely, boutique hotel in downtown Vancouver.

On our first day, we went to the Sakura Days Japanese Fair, held at the VanDusen Botanical Garden. This was the highlight of our stay in Vancouver. It was a wonderful day filled with cultural presentations of Japanese music and dancing, a Samurai Sword performance, enjoying the fares of several Japanese food trucks, and walking through the botanical garden with its many cherry trees in blossom.

We spent our second day in Stanley Park, where we visited the Vancouver Aquarium, walked along the seawall, then walked around and had lunch at the Granville Island Public Market.

Our final day in Vancouver was spent in Queen Elizabeth Park, where we enjoyed its many offerings – the Bloedel Conservatory, the Quarry Gardens, the Arboretum and more. Midway through our day, we enjoyed a lovely lunch at Seasons in the Park, which I highly recommend should you ever visit Vancouver.

Next, it was on to Mount Vernon, Washington, for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. This festival lasts the entire month of April and includes four different tulip farms you can visit. We visited two farms, Roozengaarde and Tulip Town. While both were beautiful, Roozengaarde was by far my favorite. In the first section of the farm were stunning tulip garden beds, with a blue tulip “river” weaving through. Both farms offered fields of tulips with scenic mountain views serving as the backdrop for visitors to walk through at their leisure.

From Mount Vernon, we travelled to Seattle for four days. On our first day, we were picked up at our hotel for a wine tour of three boutique wineries. Our tour also included a stop in between wineries for a hike to Snoqualmie Falls. What a great day.

On the morning of our second day we visited the Seattle Space Needle, then the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, which was spectacular and one of the highlights in Seattle. We culminated our day with a harbor cruise and dinner on the wharf.

Our third day was a day spent outdoors, starting at the Washington Park Arboretum, which included a 2.3 mile hike to the picturesque Seattle Japanese Garden. After stopping for lunch, we visited Seward Park.

On our final day in Seattle, we went to Kerry Park at the top of Queen Anne Hill for a skyline view of the city. We then visited Kubota Garden, another highlight of our time in the Emerald City. If you’re ever in Seattle, Kubota Garden is a must-see. It is a large, beautiful Japanese garden and has no entrance fee. Our final stop of the day was a walk through the iconic Pike Place Market, followed by dinner on the pier at Ivar’s Acres of Clams, where I had the best clam chowder I have ever had.

The next morning, we drove to what we thought would be our final destination – Olympic National Park. We had sunshine for most of our trip up until this point, but unfortunately, it started raining, which lasted the entire time we were in the park. We did a lot of hiking there, but the most impactful was hiking the Hall of Mosses trail in the Hoh Rainforest. What an amazingly beautiful place! Photos cannot capture its ethereal beauty. Throughout the hike you see huge old trees that form a canopy over the trailhead; and lush mosses and ferns everywhere. This hike was a spiritual experience for me; it was as if I could sense the spirits of the Indigenous people who once inhabited this magical place. It is a place of reverence.

After three days of hiking in the rain, we decided to cancel our last night in our hotel, and drove to Portland, Oregon to spend the night instead. We spent the day in the Portland Japanese Garden, considered to be one of the best in the country. Although it rained or misted the entire time, the weather did not take away from the exceptional beauty and elegance of this magnificent garden! We loved it so much we plan to return to Portland for another visit.

After nearly three weeks on the road, we started our journey home the next morning. The rerouting of our trip through Portland afforded us the opportunity to drive along the beautiful Columbia River with its spectacular sights. What a wonderful way to cap off our epic, Pacific Northwest road trip!