La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Friday was tulip-flowers-in-bloom day, a wonderfully sunny day, if still cool and with a bit of a breeze. It was as much officially the start of the tulip tourist season as the first pitch and Opening Day was for the Mariners two weeks earlier.

It was the day La Conner's merchants have been waiting for since, well, Christmas.

Morris and First street curbs were lined with cars and shoppers populated sidewalks in clumps in and around the business district. Up Third Street some went in returning to their cars.

Young, old, pushing strollers or walkers, some leaning on canes. Not many bikes that...