The Wild Iris Inn in La Conner, Washington for a great getaway.

Dear and I had an overnight there for my birthday last weekend.

First we had lunch at Seeds-A Bistro & Bar. They have a great menu. After lunch and a little walk about town I checked in for my 90 minute massage at Salon Rouge while Dear checked into our Bed and Breakfast Inn. Later we would have dinner at the restaurant in the bottom right photo.

Before dinner we strolled through the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum which is housed in the National Historical Victorian Gaches Mansion. It’s the white house on the left…

All of the food we ate was wonderful. Top left is my lunch at Seeds, Borsch and a 1/2 meatloaf sandwich. That amazing appetizer of fried polenta smothered in a fabulous sauce and the lamb shank was my meal at Nell Thorn Pub and Restaurant. It was an exceptional place to eat with a great staff and ambiance. Our two course breakfast at the Wild Iris was very tasty and filling.  Good thing it was a lovely weekend to walk around town and burn a few of the calories we ate.

Some of the shops about town. In 1869 John S. Conner purchased the trading post on the Swinomish Channel and named the area in honor of his wife Louisa Ann Conner and that’s how La Conner got its name.

The waterfront and the Rainbow Bridge crossing the Swinomish Channel. The Swinomish Indians are La Conner’s First Nation.

It was fun to come upon the wild turkeys that made La Conner their home in 2005 and that the city has declared the official town mascot.

Some sites just outside of the city center. The acres of fertile farmland around La Conner were first planted mostly with oats. The Tulip industry emerged in the Skagit Valley in the 1920’s when there were restrictions on importing Dutch Tulip bulbs. After WWII, Dutch immigrants began farming tulip bulbs. Since 1982, the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is held the month of April and has been attracting visitors from around the world to view between 400 and 500 acres of tulips in bloom. I’m going to try to get back up to this area when the tulips bloom…

On the way home on my birthday we also saw the Snow Geese which I posted about earlier in the week. La Conner was a delightful overnight getaway for Dear and ellen b.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.