Author: keely

Forkless in Forks

That was going to be my Facebook status regarding our stay in Forks, WA.
It would have been true…we had picked up some food along the way, and a knife, but I looked all about our cabin we were staying in and not a single utensil. So whatever food we had in our little fridge stayed there, and we went out to eat.
And to go geocaching. And to explore the town.
Let me tell you a little something about Forks, in case you aren’t familiar with it. If you are a Twilight fan, you will absolutely love visiting this town, where the movie was filmed. They are all about it here. If you aren’t a Twilight fan, it will probably drive you crazy. We were among the latter.
All around town, signs were advertising Twilight Tours, Twilight packages, Twilight firewood – really? The pizza place we went to was even offering a Twilight Menu. I never did see what that was, exactly, maybe you had to request it. They did have a big scrapbook album dedicated to the movie in the lobby where obsessed teenage fans wrote inscriptions about “when your boyfriend sparkles in the sun” and this kind of hoky business.
We did find this really fun geocache though so I was excited about that.

It was off this trail near the University of Washington Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC). The trail was really nice, and it really wasn’t very far down it and yet was a little challenging of a hide, if you aren’t use to this style of hiding. The view was terrific.
We also really liked our cabin, although, typical for us, we didn’t spend a lot of time in it. I would recommend this place to anyone renting in the area, though – Huckleberry Lodge Cabins. It was really affordable, especially considering the spacious room and a location that seemed to be remote and in the middle of nowhere, but really was just right off the main drag.

Despite the whole tourist trap thing, we actually really liked Forks and would go back again, especially since it’s location is so convenient to sites along the Olympic Peninsula.

Olympic National Park: Hoh Rainforest


The upper Oregon coast was stunning, and we would have liked to spend a little more time exloring Seaside and Astoria, but that day, we were on a mission.
I thought it might take us a half day to drive from Nehalem to Forks, Washington, but like every other day on this journey, it took us almost twice as long as I intended, even with our reduced side explorations this day.
I chose Forks because it was the town closest to the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, which was really the prime destination of our trip.

I found myself explaining randomly to someone why I was so focused on Olympic National Park. It’s one of those stories that is so typical of me, but makes other people wonder if I am not a little crazy ;-). Some years ago, I was struggling with unhappiness, possibly either depression or a really bad marriage. I wondered if things would ever get better, if there was ever any hope for a light at the end of this tunnel. One night I had a dream. In the dream, I was happy. And when I woke up, and for years after, I had this idea if I could just get to the place I dreamed about, I would be getting to the point in my life where I was happy.
So if you go to the link to that story, you will see that maybe I am not exactly “there” yet. This was not the same situation. But for some reason, I needed to know if I was right, about some of it at least. I wanted to see if this place resonated with any part of my being. Somewhere I had seen a picture of the Hoh Rainforest, and I thought that was the place my dream took place in.

Going there, I can say now that, although I am not certain, I don’t think this place was the place from my dream. However, it was a place from some kind of dream. It was surrealistic, damp and dreamy, with trees that towered up as high as the redwoods we had seen, and that draped themselves over pathways as if they were alive. I truly felt like the trees here had spirits, and although I wasn’t particularly afraid, I was feeling a thrill of being out in it.

We walked through the Hall of Mosses area, and along the Hoh Rainforest Loop Trail. We didn’t hike as long as I think I wanted to, though. We had already checked into our cabin in Forks, and it was looking really comfy when we left it. J wanted to go through some pictures. It was drizzly and wet, go figure, and I think we both kind of wanted to get dry. Also, we were contemplating trying to make it out to Ruby Beach before the sunset, and still wanted to get dinner. So I think we were only out here for an hour, when I could have spent days.

This National Park is not a good park for exploring by car. All the points of interest are twenty miles down different roads, which takes up a lot of drive time. We would have accomplished so much more by hiking in and camping instead of staying in town.
So, my plan is this: having tasted this “water”, I have to have some more. I want us to get in really good hiking shape, get some good backpacks, work up to longer backpacking trips, and come back out here when we can just hike for days and really get to see the inside of this park and what it has to offer.

Astoria


When we left Nehalem, we headed north along 101 towards Washington. We stopped for breakfast in Seaside, Oregon at a place called Pig N Pancake, which turned out to be quite good. Seaside would be an interesting place to come back to when it is not drizzly and wet outside.
We were trying to make time and weren’t stopping a whole lot, and the weather was fueling some of that. We were unable to resist the temptation to stop for the Astoria Column, however. These pictures were taken from the top. It is something like 164 steps to get to the top of this 125 foot tall structure that sits 600 feet above sea level. The column had some interesting murals of the past along it, although I was struck at how unfair it seemed to the Native Americans, painting the white settlers as the heroes. Lewis and Clark stand as the mythical heroes of the Pacific Northwest, gold is glorified, inventions and settlements are claimed as heritage, while the early inhabitants were pushed aside onto reservations of land worthless to grow anything on. I suppose that to the victor go the spoils.

We also met this wild animal on the way back down from the column. It did not seem concerned by us at all.

I felt like we were headed off to the end of the world, by looking at that first scene. But no, just to Washington. More to come on that.