Behind the Sign

If you think we’re obsessed with tulips here in the Magic Skagit, a place where one month of every year is dedicated to a carnival of blooms, we’ve got nothing on Holland in the years between 1634 and 1637, when “tulipomania” reigned.

Mount Vernon artist Jennifer McGill and her husband were cruising the tulip fields exactly one year ago today when the inspiration for this year’s official Tulip Festival poster struck. This is the story behind the image.

Welcome to Phase III. Consider this essay a verbal bouquet of daffodils and tulips...and hang in there, Magic Skagit. You've got this.

I first heard of the Mount Vernon company known as Goodwinds Composites the same way most other residents of the Magic Skagit did: from a recent article in the Skagit Valley Herald about a local company that was helping NASA with the first unmanned helicopter exploration of Mars. It was a fantastic account of engineering marvels and high tech materials; but if truth is stranger than fiction (and it is), the story of how Goodwinds Composites came into being is even more interesting than its contribution to our knowledge of the red planet.

Starbucks corporation describes its Capitol Hill reserve roastery as, and I quote, "...an immersive and dramatic expression of our passion for coffee, located just nine blocks from our original Starbucks Pike Place store." In an age of "truthful hyperbole," I would actually call this description an understatement. What might be more accurate, if not more fanciful, would be to describe it as a Disneyland for coffee fanatics. But however you refer to it, it's worth a day trip down south to experience it.

“And oh the stories we could tell And if this all blows up and goes to hell I can still see us sittin on the bed in some motel Listenin’ to the stories we could tell”

2020 was a darn tough year -- but to celebrate our good fortune and boundless hopes for the year ahead, we'd like to invite you to celebrate "A Very Meyer Christmas" with us. Here's how...

Erin Von Fempe of the Mount Vernon Police Department thinks of homelessness and the issues that are its causes and consequences in terms of pathology. “I feel like people without homes in our society are shunned,” she says. “I think most people want to play a positive social role in life, and no one on the street wants to be a drug addict, a transient, or homeless.” This is a story about her job.

To deal with our most recent symptoms of pandemic fatigue, my wife and I recently took a day trip to Seattle to visit the Woodland Park Zoo. Our timing turned out to be fortuitous. Despite some trepidation over what that experience would be like under pandemic circumstances, I have to say that it greatly exceeded expectations. Here's why...

Ken Hitt built his very own airplane from a kit. Let me just pause…and then repeat that first sentence for further effect. Ken Hitt built his very own airplane from a kit. By himself.

In a state that is unabashedly red to its rural core, Boise’s North End color scheme runs from deep purple to navy blue. And while it may have fewer hipsters than Seattle, you can bet they’ll whip your butt on a mountain bike trail.

In this “Corona Moment with Derek Wyckoff” of Mount Vernon's 192 Brewing Company, we offer this dispatch from the pandemic front lines of Skagit Valley businesses, starting with the most important question we could ask: can we still get beer?