Travel is about discovering the world around you. Sometimes you discover different realities in the same place. We found three different worlds on the Olympic Peninsula today. We saw the pristine world of Olympic National Park. We discovered the fantasy world of the Twilight movies and its fans. And we finally we saw the rather gritty world of the people who live here throughout the year. It was fascinating to see all three of the worlds occupying the same space yet often never seeming to touch.
The day began in Port Angeles, in the Days Inn. This place looked even worse in broad daylight than it did at night, and we slept reasonably well despite traffic noise and the smell of the room. We went downtown to snap a couple pictures before heading up to the park when we had a most unpleasant surprise – our new camera had stopped working. I wondered if maybe charging the battery some more would fix the problem, so we went up to Hurricane Ridge and charged the battery in the car as we went.
The park is truly one of the most stunning places in the west. If I were younger and not carting around two dogs, it would be tempting to get a backcountry permit and spend a couple weeks hiking through the rainforest and the alpine meadows up to the tree line. But, I’m on a schedule and not really up to sleeping in a tent anymore, either. So, John and I just looked at the scenery and walked the dogs through the picnic area. We kept reaching for our camera to snap a picture, but unfortunately charging the battery did not solve our problem. The camera still was not working. So here are a couple shots taken from Google Images which show something pretty close to what we saw up there.
We really did see a deer just about that close, but fortunately Edie did not notice it since she was looking out of the other car window.
Now the camera is under warranty, but it will take a while to get it fixed. So that meant we either had no pictures for the rest of the trip or picked up a second camera. I needed a camera for school anyhow, and we had to go back down the hill to Port Angeles, so we decided that was the easiest place to pick one up. And the only place to buy something like a camera in Port Angeles is … the Wal-Mart.
Once we had some batteries in our new camera, we returned downtown where John got the pictures he wanted to get earlier – the Twilight store. This place has everything a fan could want including maps showing where Bella, Edward, and Jake did everything.
There are dolls.
Twilight devotees either think that Bella should go with the vampire – they call themselves “Team Edward” – or the werewolf – known as “Team Jake”. Neither of us like the movies that much, but we are still members of Team Jake.
We did a bit of the Twilight tour. Here is the restaurant where Bella and Edward had their first date. She had the mushroom ravioli, you know.
When I planned this trip, I had never seen one of these movies and did not know a thing about the books. So I was confused when I found it hard to book a hotel room in Forks, Washington. I did manage to get a place at a motel room there, but it was not secured with a credit card and John wanted to get there early to avoid getting our reservation canceled. So we headed straight from Port Angeles to Forks.
In the Twilight books and movies, Forks is the town where Bella lives with her father after her mother moves to Florida. The fans come here to see her high school, the police station where her father works, and the hospital where Edward’s father works. Twilight is the luckiest thing to happen to this little burg since logging started to die. And they are determined to make the best of it. A sign on one building reads, “Forks: Where Vampires and Werewolves are welcome … and shirts are optional!” Our motel does not have Twilight themed rooms like the fancier ones in town, but even this glorified Motel 6 is trying to get the fans to stay there.
Fortunately, they did have our reservation despite the “No Vacancy” sign. Our new place was any more deluxe than the Days Inn, but at least it did not smell. Once we unpacked our stuff, we decided to explore a bit more of the peninsula. We headed north toward Cape Flattery and Neah Bay. Along the way, we stopped at a small town where we could find some beach access. Because of national park policies, it is hard to get dogs any place close to the beach here. So when we found a bit of non-national park shoreline, we wanted to take advantage of it even if it was cool and a little foggy.
On the beach here, we also caught sight of a bald eagle.
Neah Bay is the on the Makah Indian Reservation. It is an even grittier place than Port Angeles even if the natural setting is as lovely as anything in the national park. We had dinner at the “Warm House” restaurant. After Canada, food here seems free. Almost nobody was in the Warm House, and so we chatted with our waitress a bit. Since she was black, we wondered what she was doing working on an Indian reservation. We did not want to be that blunt, so we just politely asked her how she happened to be there. It turned out that there is a small Coast Guard base in Neah Bay and her husband is stationed there.
We were there too late to visit the Makah Cultural Center, but John did want to get his picture taken outside.
In the evening we returned to Forks, and surrendered to the place by watching another Twilight: New Moon on the iPad.
