16 April, Sat - Tulips and Trucks Tour - Our Ameriprise financial advisor, George Selvy, invited us on another free (!) tour to the Mt. Vernon tulip fields. The only problem was this was the weekend of the Blanchard Bash, a fly-in sponsored by the new North Cascades Soaring Club. To make it work we drove to the Everett pick-up location for the tour bus so we would not be very far from the Bash pig roast and potluck dinner when we returned at 1800.
After driving through some of the Skagit River delta, and passing a huge flock of snow geese, our first stop was at Tuliptown, one of two commercial tulip growers open to the public. Since it was still cloudy and cold, we were appreciative of the indoor displ
ays (surrounded by lots of booths for buying tulips, bulbs, souvenirs, artwork, t-shirts, coffee and snacks).After exhausting the indoor attractions, we went outside to the formal gardens and the tulip fields.
When we met back at the bus, we were surprised to find that the large parking lot was pretty much full even though the weather had not improved and the paths to the fields were muddy.
The next stop was the Paccar Technical Facility open house. Outside, on the test track, there was a display of restored antique trucks, including fire trucks, and cars. Inside the huge building were more trucks and we thought that it was going to be a pretty long two hours, but the next areas displayed the testing facilities and labs. Most sensational was a large room which seemed to be a torture chamber for trucks and truck parts, the shake test lab. One end contained a full-size semi which was being subjected to 17 days of unsynchronized jolting caused by hydraulic rams under each wheel. There was no pit, but there was a 6000 lb pendulum used for simulating crashes and rollovers on truck cabs. There were also labs dealing with wiring, lighting, infrared radiation, and another lab with scanning electron microscopes. We took a break up in the conference center where videos were being shown of, among other things, the construction of the Space Needle (timely on this the 50th anniversary of the first excavation for its deep foundation). BTW, no photos were allowed in the Paccar Tech Center.
Roozengarde, the other major tulip company was our next stop. Their demo garden was much more extensive and their
sales areas were mostly in tents. Many of the tulip fields here were not yet in bloom but there was a huge daffodil field. The wind had picked up by then (early-midafternoon) and, while there were a few patches of sunshine, we were wondering whether there was any flying to be had at Blanchard, which we could see in the far distance. [Note for next time - if there has been a rainy spring, bring rubber boots for the mud. And, take the tour: parking looked to be a hassle, then there was a long line to get to the ticket booth. On the tour we bypassed both.]
Pulling out of Roozengarde we encountered the infamous Tulip Festival jam and had to creep in bumper-to-bumper traffic across the Skagit River to Mt. Vernon. On the ridge above the city, Hillcrest Park has a rustic lodge at which the local Kiwanis members serve a salmon barbecue dinner all day and almost every day of April. From the number of folks eating around 1600, I'd guess that the Kiwanis earn enough to be able to forget about fund-raising for the rest of the year. We were more than ready to eat and the hefty portion of King salmon, along with slaw, baked potato and garlic bread went down quickly.
Back on the bus we were running a little ahead of schedule which was good for us since we had to retrace our route back to and beyond Mt Vernon to reach the fly-in evening festivities. I was glad to see that no one had towed away the Trooper which we had left parked next to a Baskin Robbins in a small shopping area. It didn't take as long as I thought it would to reach Jeff Beck's new property just a short distance up the Blanchard Hill Trail which leads to launch.
Surprisingly there were a ton of cars almost filling all available parking spots; Jeff later said that over 75 pilots had attended the fly-in. A huge bonfire (with a sacrificial wooden effigy of a paraglider photo at end of page)) was already blazing, welcome in the damp chill of the evening. While the pig wasn't done roasting yet, people were laying out and grazing on other potluck items while talking about the day's flying which had been good despite the low cloudbase. There weren't a lot of desserts so C.J.'s chocolate cake was very welcome.
When the pig was finally ready it was somewhat of a ghastly surprise to see the critter had been cooked with its head still on
and it was a pretty hairy head at that! Once the pig was carved and everyone had eaten his/her fill most folks moved out of the picnic shelter area to join the ring around the bonfire where it was measurably warmer as Jeff continued to add big cedar rounds to the blaze. Even though we hadn't done much since breakfast, we were tired enough to be glad to follow Chris Culler around 2130 when he invited us to his new house to spend the night.
17 April, Sunday - Chris and Christine provided a hearty breakfast of pan-sized blueberry pancakes with Quebec-made maple syrup. Since the weather, which had begun clear and sunny, had turned over-developed and was spitting rain, then pouring hail, we spent the morning visiting and learning to play Euchre. Later there were some blue holes but the cloudbase was below the top of Cultus and the temperature was low enough to discourage Christine from thinking about flying. Chris decided to stay home and work on their trailer while we packed up and headed home. Once out of the hills in Mt. Vernon, the sky looked much better but we had pretty much made up our minds to get home so C.J. could work on an article that Editor Nick had assigned on Friday and had to have on Monday before he left for Ghana. We heard later that many paraglider pilots had also gone home (some to fly Tiger) but that the flying had been good (at least as reported by hang gliders).(photo, left, above, not Burning Man but "Burning Bag" by the Rainier Paragliding Club)
No comments:
Post a Comment