Visitors find inspiration in lavender; Sequim festival continues through today

SEQUIM — For Mo and Fran Franken, this is like walking into a dream.

Mo and her husband, Fran, have long worked opposite shifts at their jobs in Chesterfield, N.J., midway between Philadelphia and New York City.

She’s a hospital emergency room secretary; he’s a metal fabricator. They meet on weekends in their garden, where Mo has a small patch of lavender.

Last year, Mo happened to find the Sequim Lavender Festival on the Internet.

Further surfing led to vistas of lavender fields fed by the Dungeness River, and of Olympic National Park.

“We have to go,” she told Fran.

He was fine with that. Mo and Fran have been married 20 years, but work keeps them apart a lot — so a long trip into the West sounded like an ideal respite.

Their first festival stop on Saturday morning was Angel Farm, the windswept field with a view of the mountains off Old Olympic Highway.

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