Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm is a famous place in Pacific Northwest that celebrates tulip festival every spring. The festival usually runs from beginning of April to the middle of May. Every year it has attracted thousands of visitors. Due to the pandemic last year, Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm has operated with limited capacity last year. This year, the farm is fully open; however, tickets must be purchased online with no exceptions. This allows the farm to control the crowd and traffic.
We purchased our tickets a week early because it looks like the tickets get sold out pretty quickly. We got the sunrise pass ticket which allows us to enter at 5AM in the morning. This would allow us to take photos of sun rising above the tulip field.
We got to Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm right around 5AM in the morning. It was still dark outside but there were already 4 cars ahead of us. The air was chilly in the morning but not extremely cold. We could still see the mist above the farm field. The downside of getting here early is that the gift shop wasn't open until 8AM in the morning. So we stayed in the car until 5:30AM and headed out to the field.
Around 6:10AM in the morning, the sun rises above the horizon, right behind Mount Hood. We could see many photographers with the tripod set and taking lots of photos. It was a stunning experience to see the sun rise among the tulip. As the temperature was low at night, we could see droplets of water on the tulip flower.
Luckily, the weather was not windy on this day and 3 hot air balloons were launched. It was our first time seeing the hot air balloon so close in person. The hot air balloon flows right above the tulip field. Sometimes it even got really close to the ground and simply glide over the field.
As the day gets brighter, more people came in and brought their dogs as well. We saw a lady walking with 10 dogs! All 10 dogs were the same breed and very well behaved. The lady asked her dogs to sit by the tulip and not to move so that she could take photos of them. It was really cute.
Among the tulip field, there were also tractors zig zagging through the field. Some of these tractors look rather old. The date on the tractor indicated it was from 1950s. Although the tractors go extremely slow, we still had to be very careful not to get in front of it.
At the gift shop area, there were also food carts serving food for the visitors to purchase. There were even playgrounds for younger kids to play and have fun. The rest rooms are the portable ones behind the gift shop.
This was our first time visiting Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm at sun rise. We had to wake up every early for this but it was much better than we thought. It was not crowded there and we could take all kinds of photos we want. We really enjoyed our time there. We were also able to leave early and continue to do our chores during the day. Definitely recommend to do the sun rise pass for anyone who would like to visit!