As I noted on Saturday, Viv and I went to Anacortes and La Conner for part of the weekend, on the first day of the annual Tulip Festival. I’ve just finished processing the photos, and wanted to point out some choice treats.
As we often do in small towns we visit, we dropped by the local Historical Museum (almost never busy at all, often crammed with cool stuff, and frequently featuring genuine old people who have direct personal experience of the events the interesting object are so artfully arranged to illuminate). In La Conner, it’s been built, curiously, at the top of the highest hill in town, overlooking the historical district.
There’s a large parking lot, in which all-day parking is free with the four dollar admission. This beats the two-dollar lots in the lower section of town; I don’t think they have the cool stuff this museum has on display.
I’d suggest enjoying some very scary dolls and old toys including this clown and this excellent rolling lion.
Peruse a copy of a military paper with coverage of the Liberator bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building, with coverage that sounded very, very familiar (read it for yourself in the closeup I made; next image after the paper in the gallery). Marvel at the Eureka Self-locking Tubular Potato Planter, made by Potato Implement Company and featuring the Acme registered trademark. Countless wonders await the whole family, especially if the whole family has managed to avoid having their attention span eroded by the tube.
In town, there’s countless shops playing new-age tootle, peeper and blatt which feature amazing gewgaws that drip or run with water in some sort of homage to our fantastic pallor-enhancing weather. Naturally, such shops draw antique dealers like flies, and the two merchant schools cluster thickly along the banks of the winding oxbows of the river that runs through town. There’s also the excellent La Conner Brewing Co, where we ate a tasty lunch.
Once you’re out on the open plat, (all the country roads run straight and at right angles to one another), there are many, many flat fields. Most are green. A few featured flowers that were actually in bloom, but we were kinda early.
We did find an Art Show, entitled, in the creatively-fulfilling manner of art committees everywhere, “Art In A Pickle Barn“, which pretty well sums it up. I didn’t see anything that got me all worked up except for the very interesting rusted and dusty machine sitting in a back corner of the room. It looked to me like a corn-processing machine, but what the hell do I know about farming? I wanted to take pictures of it, but defeated myself due to the “No cameras” sign posted at the entrance to the Art Show.
Finally, we got a hot tip that there was color out at “Tulip Town”, which is where the experience I recounted in Saturday’s entry occurred, and indeed, where we finally got some money shots. All in all a pleasant spring outing.
http://www.skagitcounty.net/offices/historical_society/index.htm