Day 5: Forks, WA to La Push, WA
September 4th, 202022.76 mi / 11.43 mph / 501 ft. climbing
Staying at Mora National Park Campground
Rett loves ‘Twilight’. Yeah, the vampire/werewolf love-triangle teen romance series of books and movies. The story is set in Forks, Washington, but we’ve already visited many of the movie locations in the Portland, Oregon area where they were actually filmed. Still, ever since we knew we were moving to Washington, Rett has been excited about the idea of visiting Forks. Until recently, she had no idea that she’d end up doing it on her bike.
Welcome to Forks!
So I’d scheduled today as an “off day”. Giving us plenty of time to visit all of the things ‘Twilight’-related. Of course an “off day” always manages to get turned “on” somehow.
First stop was the Tourist Center, where Forks (pop. 3250, rainfall: ~120 inches/year, by far the largest town west of the Olympics) has wisely dived headfirst into the ‘Twilight’ fan-service and made it a business. (We were successfully able to ignore the fact that Forks is more-recently famous for felling trees across a road to block-in a mixed-race family innocently looking for a camping spot because they insanely thought they were Antifa agitators come to destroy their nowhere town). Next was the laundromat. Not because it was a movie location, but….to do laundry. Then, our first restaurant meal of the trip, with our first beers! Finally! After a final stop at the high school, it was time to leave the family stronghold of the vampiric Cullen clan, and cross over to the lands of their shape-shifting rivals, the Quileute Tribe.
Bella’s truck
Beer, sweet beer! Well, cider and mead, in Rett’s case.
Hey!!! 🙁
Well, not quite, because their tribal lands are closed due to COVID-19, so instead we returned to the Pacific coast just across the river from their La Push, at Rialto Beach instead.
We survived and didn’t get attacked by any shape-shifters, so I guess at least we know we aren’t vampires.
Notes from hundreds of Twilight fans.
Our mark!
Edward is appropriately hiding on the shady backside of the sign.
Choose Your Side
We’ve been to the beach in Oregon that stood in for the La Push Beach in the movies, and it was spectacular. And I’m sure the beaches on the La Push side here in Washington are very nice too. But Rialto Beach blows them away. Undoubtedly the highlight of the trip for me, and I’m so happy Rett was willing on our “off day” to do the mile+ slog down the stony beach to the Hole-in-Wall, and ridiculous sea-stacks that old-man-Luke-Skywalker was probably using as his latest refuge. Let’s just say I took 103 pictures today, like 4 times more than normal. And none of them do justice to the epic scale of rocks and water and skeleton trees.
The mouth of the Quillayute River flowing into the Pacific, with La Push beach across the river to the left.
Luke Skywalker’s hideout, with a green kite and a small Rett for scale.
A natural throne for my queen
The most-massive piles of driftwood I’ve ever seen.
Ocean waves
A lot of people (including these hippie kite-flyers) hiked out to camp overnight. Something on our list for next time!
Stacks
Helpful guy at the bottom left for scale.
Hole-In-The-Wall
Heading “home” to camp.
Heading “home” to camp.
There are these huge rocks. In the ocean. Right there. With trees growing on them. Awesome.
So despite our low-mileage day, we ended up getting into our equally-epic National Park campsite just before sunset. And Rett magically threw together her now-famous camp-stove Pomodoro pasta in the near-dark to cap one of the best days of bike touring I’ve ever had. Now hopefully the werewolves know that Rett at least is torn between being Team Edward vs. Team Jacob, and will leave us in peace for the night.