The Twilight Tour

As I mentioned in my last post, times have been a bit on the crazy side these days. Since that leaves me clueless as to the best place to start catchup, I'll just start right in the middle with Aaron's family's visit. We of course had a great time with them and hope they did too...despite being tossed around to three different places to rest their head on their six night stay. It was all for the sake of adventure though, so no one can complain!

Our big adventure this time was the Olympic Peninsula, inspiration for the recent cult phenomenon, "Twilight." This is a craze that personally I don't understand...I read the first two books, pulling out my own hair every step of the way. No offense to those who like it, but I guess I was just never that kind of girl. It does make for a good adventure though, so off we went.

Our first stop en route to the famed Forks was Ocean Shores, which is the nearest beach to where we live. I figure it's always good to give those land locked Idahoans a chance to stare off into the never-ending waves.



We turned our trek northward for the Quinault Rain Forest. This is supposedly the world's largest Blue Spruce. Looks pretty big to me!



The Quinault Rain Forest surrounds Lake Quinault, which is really beautiful...



...and a great place to skip rocks...or try to throw them really far and hit the random poles sticking up out of the water.

We stayed the night out at Kalaloch in a very small cabin overlooking the ocean. The smaller the cabin, the better the chance for family bonding, right guys? Just off the beach are the "Kalaloch Rocks" that provided great opportunity for "daring the ocean" as Aaron's dad put it. We would run out to the rocks as the tide went out, then have to wait while it came back in and went back out again to return safely to shore.

Don't be jealous, but it was awesome. (This is the beach just south of La Push, for all you Twilighters out there...you CAN be jealous).

The weather had been on our side on the first day of travels, but the second day we weren't quite so lucky. We had the Hoh Rainforest and the booming metropolis of Forks on the agenda for the morning and didn't let the weather stop us. Considering the rain forest gets about 150 inches a year of rain (compared to Seattle's 40 and Idaho's 7), we knew we had a pretty good chance of getting soaked.

Somehow I didn't get any pictures of Forks itself, but since most of the movies are filmed down in St. Helens Oregon and up in Vancouver Canada, I think the actual town may have been a bit of a letdown for Aaron's sisters. Maybe we'll just have to save those for next trip!

Anyone interested in booking their own Olympia Peninsula tour, call me anytime, I seriously love playing Tour Guide.

Maybe I'll even take a picture of your backside to share with posterity.