A Day Trip to Skagit Valley
Skagit Valley is know for a few things - the tulips being the number one but there is also wonderful hiking, small farms and breweries that are wonderful to explore! Last spring, a friend and I headed up to the area for a weekend and had a great time checking out everything it had to offer.
We packed up the dogs and headed just an hour and fifteen minutes north and hiked Oyster Dome. Oyster Dome is a very popular dog-friendly hike since its such a short drive from Seattle. It’s a 5 mile round trip with 1050 elevation gain and is rated as a moderate hike. The hike is beautiful and gives great PNW vibes through trees the whole way up. The top boasts views of the San Juan Islands and Olympic Mountains. I definitely recommend arriving early as this hike can be very crowded and parking is minimal!
A four minute drive from the Oyster Dome Trail is Taylor Shellfish and if you are a fan of sitting outside on a nice day I cannot recommend this place enough! Even if you’re not a shellfish fan, Taylor Shellfish is still a fun place to meet up with some friends and grab a drink by the water. You can see the oysters being harvested right next to the building. In addition to oysters, they’ll also be serving up local, seasonal options such as clams, Dungeness crab, shrimp, and more.
We ended up spending the night at Larabee State Park Campground. The Campground was well maintained and fairly empty which was nice for us. We made quesadillas for dinner land walked the dogs on the beach nearby. We woke up early the next morning and once again took the dogs for a nice walk on the beach. Monty loved all of the smells of the sea creatures and jumped around inspecting all of the mussels.
After packing out and meeting our neighbors who gave us a tour of their camper, we headed over to the tulip fields. The traffic was crazy at Roozengaarde so we ended up continuing to drive around to look at the other fields and decided not to pull over and pay an entrance fee. But then we found a private little field right next to the road that basically no one was in so we decided to pull over and take some photos with the dogs! The field was just what we were looking for - dog friendly, few crowds and drone friendly! I was able to get some pretty awesome shots of the tulips with my drone as well as some photos of the dogs - posing begrudgingly.
Drone photo of the rows of red tulips
I took so many photos on my drone and had so much fun with it. Then I packed away the drone and we spent some time making a lot of funny noises at the dogs to look at us. In typical Monty form, he did everything he could to not look at the camera.
After spending about an hour or so at the tulip fields, continued our trip around Bow. If you didn’t know, Bow, Washington, is filled with lots of little farm stands and cute shops. I highly recommend picking up a farm map which points you to all of the farms around the town that sell cheese and other goods. We ended up passing by one of my favorite little farms, Bow Hill Blueberries. They sell blueberry juice and other goods at Seattle Farmers Market so I was already aware of their farm and wanted to check it out! We got an ice cream sandwich to split and I also picked up some blueberry powder which is great in smoothies and baked goods! In season, you can also pick up fresh blueberries.
Our final stop was the Terramar Brewstillery in the Bow - Edison town. This spot is a great stop for lunch in the Skagit Valley area We even tried the bloodymary oyster shooters!
Then it was time to head back to Seattle! We had so much fun up in Skagit Valley and I’m looking forward to heading back up there again soon! The gardens will open up on April 1st and I will be up there for a few tulip photo sessions. If you’re interested in scheduling a tulip photo session, feel free to reach out at hello@margotmckelvie.com