Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan, May 2005
Part 2: Window on the Waterfront, Windmill Island, De Graaf Nature Center

In the afternoon, we went to the Window on the Waterfront Park. The brochure says there are about 70,000 tulips here.

Next, we went to Windmill Island. It cost $6.50 apiece to enter the park and there are supposed to be 175,000 tulips here. The park features a 240 year old working Dutch windmill "De Zwaan" (meaning graceful bird). During the festival, they frequently run out of parking. This is the most commercial part of the festival. If we come again, I think we would skip it.

As you can see, they are a lot of shops.

This is the actual windmill. All the people on the left side are in line to see the inside of it.

A Killdeer

Next, we drove up to the Veldheer's Tulip Farm and saw that it was totally mobbed and decided to go to the De Graaf Nature Center. It's hard to find since the map has it on the other side of the street and it has very little street frontage. It's a nice, small nature center in a neighborhood setting. Amazingly, there was no one there while we were visiting.

We and the birds enjoyed the bird feeder. These are American Goldfinches.

A male and female Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Northern Cardinal