The 29th Annual LaConner Tulip Daffodil Rallye

Nicholas & I dutifully dusted off our rally brains for the traditional “Opening Day” of driving season here in the Pacific Northwest. The Mount Baker MG Car Club puts on this event every year, and has for almost thirty years! The Tulip Rallye is in fact older than the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. It is a great, low-key, fun event that has fairly easy route-finding and a “gimmick rally” format – meaning you answer goofy questions with hints from signs and obscure items along the way. No TSD calculations required, so it is a fun way to start the season. It brings together between two- and three-hundred cars every year (though I imagine next year’s 30th anniversary will easily top 300) starting as always at the Cascade Mall in Burlington and finishing at the Swinomish Casino.

Unfortunately this year the forecast was for rain, mixed with rain and drizzle, mist, and showers, and maybe late afternoon clearing. Thankfully we had an option to taking the Jaguar, as I’ve been storing the ’79 450sl in the barn for my father.

The Jaguar is a great car for open-topped motoring, but is seriously lacking in space and visibility, especially when it rains. Given that this event is all about seeing things outside of the car, we went for the Benz.

The turn-out was pretty good, with the majority being late-model cars. As always the Puget Sound MINI club arrived in big numbers, along with the Corvette Club, the Solstice/Sky club, and quite a few Mustang people. A surprise addition this year was the Mercedes-Benz club, so we were in a veritable crowd of R107s! A pitifully small number of Jaguars showed up – maybe four.

We managed to stay on course, and find answers to all but a couple of questions. The route was much shorter than past years, and even had a built-in 30 minute wait period between Mt. Vernon and La Conner.

The really only challenging bit, at least in terms of the gimmicks was a battery of quick-succession puzzles in downtown Anacortes, right on Commercial Ave/Hwy20. Of course as we arrived there the rain came down in torrents, and traffic was pretty thick. The only way we managed was driving one block at a time, and stopping to park as the traffic went by. The last thing I wanted to do was be “that guy” holding up traffic on the town’s main street.

From there we arrived swiftly to the end of the rally at Swinomish. Despite being car number 227, we still had about two hours to kill before they started handing out awards, and the weather remained spotty, so we hopped on Highway 20 and ran over to Burlington to grab a lunch at Bob’s.

We enjoyed our burgers and watched a sports car race at Lime Rock on the tube. Thankfully the weather man’s promise of late afternoon clearing came true, and the clouds were breaking up. We dashed back to Swinomish and hung out taking photos and talking with occasional blog commentator Sandro Menzel.

We have a history of placing well in our club (Seattle Jag Club) but in order to win awards you have to have at least five cars from the club represented at the event. Even though we were driving a Mercedes-Benz I still listed our club affiliation with the Jaguar. It didn’t help as very few Jaguar folks attended, so we couldn’t win a trophy. Nick however won a door prize:

A framed print of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival poster.

We had a great day, and really look forward to next year’s event. Hopefully the weather will be great!