Life's Short! Go RVing!: Our Twilight Time

Eeeeek…..I was in FORKS, WA, the home of Edward and Bella and Jake!!!

Forks is quite possibly the smallest town I have ever stayed in, with just over 3000 people living there. However, according to the Twilight tour I went on, (oh you know I did!) they get over 18,000 visitors a year all due to Twilight! And still, the town is "small town" with only one stop light. We stayed in Forks for 4 nights at Forks 101 RV Park.

On our drive in from Astoria, we stopped at The Hoh Rainforest entrance to Olympic NP and did a short mile hike. It was amazing getting to hike in the ONLY rainforest in the US!

Hi Daddy!

We checked out a Little Explorer backpack that had guide books, and bonoculers, etc in it. L carried it and had fun using the tools. There was also a game about the Life Cycle that Joe played with her later.

Here are some of our discoveries we made on our hike in the rainforest.

HUGE SLUGS EVERYWHERE!!! We liked gently poking them with sticks.

HUGE Clovers.

Nurse Logs. It was beautiful to see all the "new" trees were growing from the fallen tress. L kept pointing to the dead trees and saying, "Look, that one is doing a good job!"

Cute little noisy birds.

Waterfalls.
We also found fish bones and a dead snow mole. Joe found the mole and it was awesome! (no pic)

Once settled in Forks, we set out in search of dinner and arrived at Golden Gate Chineese. Great reviews, but like most of our restaurant adventures, it wasn’t that good, fried and blah. We have given up on finding good places to eat, especially in small towns.

There’s not much in the way of night life, besides a bowling alley that stays open until “10pm ish”, so we headed home after dinner. Besides, L was in a mood.

Chores are always needing to be done, so we took a day to get some laundry done and do some grocery shopping. Oh My God…..the groceries were more expensive then I have seen anywhere! …..In FORKS! For example, Folgers Coffee (big one) on sale at $12 regularly $14, Bacon (small off brand) $6, lemon $1 each, coffee creamer (big one) $6!!! I had to make some hard choices selecting items, and we ended up eating spaghetti, and lamb of all things. Lamb was cheapish ($8 lb)! Besides the prices, I did enjoy shopping by myself, while Joe watched the kids at the RV. I don't get much time to myself now a days. I may have pretended to be Bella while I walked a few of the isles.

The girls, especially Bean, are obsessed with playing babies this week!

Here they are combining playing Babies with Go To Sleep.

Our last day in Forks, we really packed it in! We all drove an hour away up the coast to the North Pacific’s “Whale Tail” to see the Makah Reservation’s award winning museum. The entrance fee was $5 for each adult, kids free. This tribe were whale hunters. They did not allow any photography in the museum, but it was one of the best we’ve ever seen, complete with a longhouse built inside that was built with the same tools the tribe used hundreds of years ago. We took a moment inside the house to talk to Loralai about what it would be like to live in a house with 4 or 5 other families. We asked her, “What if Mable’s family lived right over there at that fire ring?”. She said she would like that a lot! We also asked her to lay down on some of the benches with a grass mat for a pillow and tell us what it was like to sleep there. “Not very comfy”, she said. We all wished we could stay longer, but we had to rush back, so I could go on my TWILIGHT TOUR!!!! The drive along the coast, back to “town” was pretty, but very windy, so I drove. We all got our first view of Canada across the river on this drive and were inspired to get our passports!

Joe dropped me off at the Twilight store in town and headed to the bowling alley with the girls, while I waited for the tour bus.

The gang was all there!

Look what I found while at The Cullen's house! Taken through the window of the porch, since we were technically allowed inside.

Tour Positives

1. It great to be with other dorky Twi-fans like myself!

2. It was cool to learn about the town and be toured around.

3. It was cool to see First Beach.

4. It was cool to take pictures with Twilight stuff.

Bella wasn't home.

Tour Negatives

1. I was alone, so I was asked to squeeze into an inside back seat, next to a lady that had a bum leg and every time I got out, which was at EVERY spot of course, she had to struggle to stand up and let me out.

2. I was alone, so I had to keep asking other people to take pictures of me. Everyone was very nice and happy to do so.

3. The bus smelled like smoke.

4. The guide was funny and had a lot of info, but he just seemed tired and done with this stuff.

5. Not one second of the movie was actually filmed in Forks, WA. And I’m not sure how the places we stopped were chosen as THE places in the Twilight books? I have actually emailed this question to the tour guides. No response yet.

La Push Baby! La Push!

Also known as First Beach and gorgeous with eagles flying all around and seals and sea lions swimming in the water and tons of driftwood!

Overall, for $40, I’m glad I did it! It was fun and THE thing to do in Forks!

Joe picked me up 2.5 hours later and said that the girls had had a great time bowling! Bean actually just sat and watched L and Joe bowl for a long time. They ate tater tots and talked to the owner, who was the only person working there at the time.

The next day, we packed up and drove the hour to Port Angeles, WA.

At the beginning of our trip, we were on it when it came to making RV reservations and researching the next area we would be in, but we (I) have really slaked off on that as the trip continues! It’s so tedious to research night after night, making sure the RV park is available, and in budget, and has good enough Internet for Joe to work, etc. All of this often done, just to find out that the internet is not so good after all when we arrive. So being the slackers we were this week, we headed to Port A with no idea of where we would stay. We drove through the town of 18,000 people, and didn’t see anything that would work, so we stopped at McDonalds’ and found a place with their free Wi-Fi while the kids played; Elawa Dam RV Park. It was a really nice place and just a little over budget at $32 a night.

Elawa RV Park

Picnic lunch on a sunny day!

"All done."

In Port Angeles, it became even more clear that we needed our passports, being only an 18 minute ferry ride from Victoria Canada! So, I started the journey of trying to find out what all getting our passports entailed. Thank you to all of you who helped us via Facebook. By day 2, Joe and I were at the court house handing over our birth certificates and putting in a rush order. For those of you wondering how much is costs now a days to get your passport book as I did, it’s $135, plus the court fee of $25, plus $60 if you want to rush order. Yikes! Hopefully we will have them before we get too far away from Canada!

More slugs! This one we found around our RV and it had spots!

Also while in Port A for 4 days, I took L on a hike to see the dam removal that was just completed while Joe and Bean took a nap. It’s a big deal for Olympic NP (and all of us) since it will hopefully increase Salmon spawning and increase fish populations, thereby increasing wildlife populations, there by….. Ah, the web of life. We are all connected.

We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant one night and Juliet made friends with the owner's grandson.

Just about every day in Port Angeles, we went to The Olympic NP Ranger Station there. It had a little museum with info on Native Americans that lived there once, the topography of the park, and the animals. Most importantly to us, there was an Explorer Room for kids to learn hands-on with puppets and puzzles, computer games, and activities! We complete some of L’s ranger packet here, and got her badge for Olympic. The ranger who gave it to her was very nice and also very impressed with all the badges L had gotten so far!

Guess who's the ranger in charge?

Hug the Kitty.

Badge #....I've lost count. :)

Another day we went to story time at the library and of course made some friends!

Story Time Theme was Dinosaurs.

Reading in the library playhouse with a friend.

When Joe got off work one day, we drove up to Hurricane Ridge in the NP. The drive was beautiful! L and I got out at the ranger station there, mostly to use the bathrooms (and get my stamp). It was snowing! We stopped a little further down so L could play in the snow with her Daddy and do a little hike. On the way back, we saw a black bear and her newborn cub in the grass along the side of the road. I FINALLY SAW A BEAR!!! Still, I think L was the most excited of all of us. She has just told us that “Bears do not exist.”

The View

See Canada? It's there.

She threw a snow ball right in Daddy's jacket pocket.

THE BEAR

On another afternoon we went on a hike to Marymere Falls near Lake Crescent. It was a beautiful hike and we took the Explorer Pack with us.

On our last day, we visited Sol Duc hot springs, which is another entrance into Olympic NP. We did a short little hike, before going into the springs. $12 adults and $9 kids 3-12. A little pricey if you ask me for what you get! Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we did it and we all had a good time and even met some friends (a couple with 3 girls), but it could have been better. It was a chilly day and the place was crowded. Since there are only 3 warm pools, all of them small, sit-down pools, and only 1 that’s cool enough for Bean to swim in, and one of them is always closed for cleaning, we spent the first 20 minutes sitting on a bench, waiting for the “wading pool” to open back up. Loralai had fun in one of the other hot pools with Joe and I switching off to be with her. Once the wading pool opened, we all got in the 6 inches of water and had a good time, with L and I running over to the huge “Cold Pool” every 10 minutes or so to jump in the cold water and run back to the warm pool. After a few trips, the cold water didn’t seem so cold to us and we just stayed in and swam around, having races, and Loralai got a kick out of being able to pick me up while in the water. I showed her this, after remembering how much I loved to pick up my own mom under water as a kid. Good lesson in buoyancy and changing weight as well! So, it was fun, but crowded and cold and expensive. Something that everyone should do at least once though if you are in the area! (Forgot to take pics)

Other than this, we spent some time playing at the RV parks playground and driving around town. It was a cute town. Best of all, I found gas for UNDER $4 a gallon. And for that alone, WE LOVE Washington! It did not offer much for Twilight fans that I could find. There was an Italian restaurant, Bella Itialiana, but it was not the kind of place you take kids, especially our kids, and it was opened after the books and movie came out. As for the bookstore in the movie, it doesn’t really exist in Port A. It rained almost every day, but not ALL day.

Remeber this guy (Bigfoot)?

Sunday we packed up and drove the 2.5 hours to “The Seattle Area”. Seattle is a big freaking city y’all! Trying to see Seattle in a few days is like trying to see The Entire Houston Area in a few days! But more on that to come…