Visiting Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm
I have always dreamed of visiting the famous tulip fields over in The Netherlands, but I haven’t had the opportunity to make it there just yet. Luckily for me, I found the next best thing: the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Woodburn, Oregon.
I know what you’re thinking: HUH?! There’s tulip fields in Oregon??? HECK YEAH THERE ARE! They are so big, beautiful, and I know once you see some of these pictures you’ll be planning a trip out there, too. Here is everything you need to know to visit Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm.
How do I get there?
Fly into Portland. Woodburn is just a 50 minute drive away. Easy peasy! The address is 33814 S Meridian Rd, Woodburn, OR 97071. Plug that into your GPS, and you’ll be good to go. You can spot the colorful tulips from a ways down the road, so you’ll know you’re in the right place.
When is the best time to go?
The festival usually runs from mid March to early May. Wooden Shoe is open every day of the week. The hours are 9am-6pm Monday through Friday and 8am-7pm on the weekends.
The website is great and super informative. They are really good about updating the “field report” which tells you what percentage of the tulips are in bloom. For the best pictures and the most beautiful fields, you’ll want to try to visit when about 90% are blooming. I called ahead and emailed a few weeks before my trip to ask for their predictions and see if the week I was planning on visiting was ideal. They were very helpful and so excited that I would be attending their beloved festival.
How do I get tickets?
Tickets can be bought online, and you select exactly what day you want to go. They cost $25 per person, and you can enter and exit as much as you would like throughout the day.
Is there anything to do there besides look at tulips?
Yes! Wooden Shoe prides itself on over 40 beautiful acres of tulips, but they also have over 200 acres of outdoor space that they fill with family-fun activities and yummy food stands. Because of this, the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival is renowned as one of the top spring attractions in the state of Oregon year after year. I recommend the shaved ice, although you might want to split it with someone because it was bigger than my head!
On the weekends and the occasional weekday, you can witness hot air balloons flying over the fields. If you sign up in advance, you can be in one of them! I can’t imagine anything more beautiful to fly over than a massive flower field! The balloons take off a little after sunrise, though, so you’ll have a very early wake up call for this experience, but it’s absolutely worth it whether you’re up in the sky or watching from down below like I was.
I’m coming for pics galore! Got Any advice?
Oh do I! I took an insane amount of photos at Wooden Shoe, and they are probably some of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. And good news, it was actually a lot easier than I expected.
Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm actually offers a photographer’s ticket that allows you to enter as early as 5am to capture the sunrise. It’s the same price as regular admission, and you can still stay all day if you’d like. For people like me, it is SO ideal.
To my surprise, I wasn’t the only person there on a Tuesday morning at the crack of dawn! There were at least a dozen other photographers there, tripods and all, ready to capture the first light of day. However, they were all by themselves, and they were just interesting in capturing the landscape and the sunrise itself. Because of this, I practically had the fields to myself, so I frolicked around and got tons of great golden hour shots with no one in them. I was even lucky enough to capture some with the hot air balloons as they took off! Just make sure you shoot quickly because those balloons move a lot faster than you’d think.
After sunrise, more and more people slowly started flooding in, so I went back to my room to take a nap. Hey, I had gotten up at like 4am! Can you blame me?
I returned later on to try some of the various foods, like that yummy shaved ice pictured above, and to shoot some more pictures. I changed my dress and hat so it looked like a new day, and I took some more pictures in different color tulips for a completely new vibe. It was a little harder to dodge the people this time around, but I think I managed pretty well.
Oh, and fair warning – don’t wear a white dress if you’re as clumsy as me. I completely wiped out within the first 10 minutes, and my entire butt was COVERED in dirt! Lesson learned.
Another tip: you can’t pick any of the flowers here. You can buy some pre-picked ones, though if you’d like. The ones I’m carrying in my purse are actually fake! They were super cheap, and I brought them with me along with the little watering can because I love using props to spice up my images.
Have you ever been to a tulip farm? If not, I hope I’ve inspired you to visit the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Oregon.