Shh…Don’t tell anyone.

Arrive on any non-summer-visitor-rush day at Rosario Beach and you will likely be alone. I know, right? Unfortunately, most folks must visit during the summer months, which are also awesome, as long as you don’t mind sharing. And I don’t.

First, the tide pools, also known as the Urchin Rocks, for reasons that will become obvious when you arrive. En route, stop at the kiosk (you’ll pass it and the new restroom facilities on your way).

Check out the sketch on the back side to see examples of creatures you might encounter during low tide. The informational sign shows several creatures that I have yet to find, including nudibranchs and octopuses.

Then follow the path towards the water and head to the rocks on the right. During the summer, a Beach Watcher will likely greet you. She is there to remind you to tread carefully on the rocks…

If my same-size sister and I had known that the canoe our neighbors agreed to loan us weighed nearly as much as one of us, we’d have handled things differently. Our plan: to lift, load and transport the dark green Coleman X Scanoe to our destination seven miles away: Cornet Bay, part of Deception Pass State Park, where we’d then unload the behemoth and paddle over to Ben Ure (rhymes with “cur”) Island for a camping adventure. The canoe was not only heavy but so large that its sides extended beyond the three successively larger cars, thus roof racks, from which we had to choose. We finally found a set it would fit (though not well) on our our old Dodge Caravan, half-filled with cedar-smelling brush awaiting transport. The tiny (by my calculation, about 11.5 acres) island to which we were headed is named after an infamous man with a “rocky…exciting”…

Every year, not far from here, farmers plant, tend and harvest hundreds of thousands of iris, daffodil and tulip bulbs.

All the information a person needs can be found at the Tulip Festival site, including a map of the various fields indicating where the flowers can be found.

Having read Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire (which covers four crops, including the tulip),

and watched the PBS program based on the book, I’ve become more interested in this particular plant. In an NPR interview, Pollan talks about the tulip,

“GWEN IFILL: Well, also, in talking about… You talk about the apple, but then you talk about the tulip, which is this icy, perfect, beautiful flower but yet drove people to madness in Holland.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah, the story of the tulip is kind of amazing. I mean, this was the, tulip mania you’re referring to in Holland, and it…