SEQUIM – There’s a strange, wonderful thing about the flocks of humanity teeming through the streets, streaming off tour buses and flowing through the fields.
They’re calm.
Children rarely whine, and adults seem blissfully detached from cell phones.
The Lavender Festival has that effect on people.
The 11th annual celebration, which runs through today in and around Sequim, envelops the senses with lavender ice cream, lavender margaritas, fragrant facial mists and a purple horizon.
Ask Lexus Bartoy, 10, of Buckley whether the herb’s vaunted calming quality is for real.
“Yessss,” she sighs. “I use it on my brother,” who’s 6. A few drops of lavender oil on his pillow, and he’s mellow.
The lavender mob was overwhelmingly female again this year – festival reports have shown women are 71 percent of attendees – but there were also many good sports visiting the festival tour’s eight farms with their mates.
Don Olson, an engineer from Pasco, came with his wife, Pam, to Sequim for their first child-free outing since their twins were born nearly two years ago.
He had a lavender paraffin hand treatment at the Purple Haze farm, and even allowed nail technician Deborah Bowers to spritz his face with a lavender mist.
“I was not real excited to come to the festival,” he admitted. But “trying something new . . . was fun.”
The festival crowd included locals alongside visitors from afar.
Colleen Rogers, a 35-year resident of Sequim, visited the Fir Street fair for the first time, and said its 150-plus vendors bordered on overwhelming. She braved the scene to buy a gift for an out-of-town friend.
Eva Chang, 10, came from Taiwan to visit her aunt, Karen Tsao, in Seattle, and found herself exploring the curved rows of royal velvet and English lavender at the Port Williams farm.
And Sahara Abdi of Shoreline brought her daughters Sophia, 8, and Surare, 11, to see Sequim after they had watched “Taste of America’s” Lavender Festival coverage on The Travel Channel.
Abdi will move her family back to her homeland of Ethiopia this fall.
“I want my kids to learn our culture,” she said. “After they finish high school, I’ll want to bring them back here, to go to university.”
In addition to the street fair downtown, each farm on the festival tour has rows of vendors selling everything from chair massages to salad dressing.
But what Port Williams Lavender co-owner Sue Shirkey hopes to give people is less tangible.
“The experience of being in the country,” she said, “is what we’re all about.”
THE LAVENDER FESTIVAL continues today with farms and the Fir Street fair open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Admission to the street fair is free, while tickets to the farm tour are $15, or free for children 12 and younger.
Parking is available in the QFC lot at 990 E. Washington St., and shuttle buses ferry people to the street fair, farms and other Sequim attractions.
For information, visit the festival booth at Fir Street and Third Avenue, the Visitor Center at 1192 E. Washington St., or www.LavenderFestival.com.
