Samee drove with Amy, Mom, Dad, Archie and Tilly on Wednesday evening to spend the night for an early start to our Thursday Dad's Day.
Dave ran to get us coffees before we left about 8:30 to Index/Gold Bar area, where we rented a tour guide to take us on ATV's up to the Reiter Foothills State Forest. (Skyhomish Outfitters)
We had a beautiful and warm sunny day and 33,000 acres to ourselves, except for two dirt bike riders and one hiker we passed on our way down. Pretty amazing!
Dad drove and Mom was the passenger on this adventure....He kept it under control this time!
Samee
Papa, Grandma, Mom
We stopped for a short hike to see a waterfall but there was no trail, just a lot of rocks and we didn't quite make it to the waterfall. We could see it up ahead tho.
Samee was maybe pointing it out :)
Amy and Grandma
Papa and Samee
Our guide Anthony had picked up delicious sandwiches from The Bush House in Index.
We had lunch at a beautiful overlook at 4,000 feet elevation.
He told us here that he was surprised we hadn't seen any bears yet today.
Mom and I were on lookout the whole way back down.
We laughed and laughed at Mom not taking her helmet off and looking like Baby Darth.
Amy, Leanna, Samee
Samee, Amy, Leanna
Dave was following us with my iPhone location app
After our awesome ATV ride we headed to Mount Vernon in Skagit Valley for the Tulip Festival.
(We had purposefully chose to do Dad's Day on Thursday because we had heard the Tulip Festival is crazy busy on Fridays through the weekend)
There were several tulip farms but we chose to go to Tulip Valley Farms.
They had a few Highland Cows on site.
We had pre-purchased 25 stems each and we went out to the fields to collect them in a bucket.
Tulip Valley Farms was the summer workplace of University of Idaho murder victim Ethan Chapin. They planted and bloomed these yellow and white flowers, called Forever Smiles in his honor. The pink and white combo tulips are called Forever Sisters in honor of the 3 young women victims.
Farmer Andrew taught us a little about tulip care and we cut the stems and wrapped them up to go home.
Our last stop was an all you can eat Crab Feast at Who's on First in Snohomish.
They stayed the night and we woke up Friday morning, got the kids to school, loaded up, and went to Huckleberry for breakfast.
Our tulips traveled home in our boots and looked pretty wimpy, but they perked up with some ice cold water (Farmer Andrew's tip to us).
Taylor Swift's new album dropped Thursday night and we listened to a couple of her new songs on our way.
Tilly missed her dad :)
This was our seventh Dad's Day:
Seattle
Spokane
Walla Walla/Pendleton
Hood River
Cle Elum/Roslyn
Leavenworth
Gold Bar/Skagit Valley
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