Tulip Time!

What a spectacular weekend! We put our house on the market, left the kids at home, and took off for a long weekend to go to The Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan. The Tulip Time Festival was first started in 1927 by Miss Lida Rogers, a Biology teacher at Holland High School. She suggested that Holland adopt the tulip as its flower, because of its close ties to the Netherlands, and she set aside one day for the festival. All these years later, the festival features 4.5 million tulips planted throughout the city, and is held the 2nd week of May for 8 days annually. There are parades, carnivals, arts & crafts shows, Dutch dance, and many more fun activities!

We booked our weekend camping spot at Dutch Treat Campground about a month in advance, with no problem getting the reservation. When Jim called, he gave them our last name (Mellema) and for the first time ever was not even asked how to spell that!!! I guess they know a good Dutchman’s name when they hear one! The campground itself is a very nice, quiet, woodsy place with a fishing pond and a nice playground for the kids. The owners are super nice and the accommodations were very nice. We would highly recommend them!

We spent most of our time at Windmill Island Gardens, where we went on the windmill tour (very cool!) and walked around the whole park taking pictures of all the tulips.

This photograph is the big field of tulips shot from on top of the windmill at the end of the tour. We also enjoyed an authentic Dutch lunch of vegetable soup with meatballs, cole slaw, and (Jim’s favorite) currant bread. Delicious!

All in all it was a very nice weekend, and I look forward to going back to the Holland area to check it out more!

We did go down to Lake Michigan, but it was super chilly and foggy that day so we didn’t stay long, but I would love to go back on a warm July day!! I got a bit of work done too, as many of these photographs (and many more!) will be uploaded to the stock photography sites that I work for, so I can make a little money off of the photographs that I took.

Until next time!

Jim and Carol