Forks Day Two! (Part One)

Bella's Birthday Card, on the porch of the B&B

This is going to have to be divided into two parts. The first and second half of the day. So day 2. After sleeping on a cloud from heaven bed, I woke up at 5:30, after trying to sleep, I gave up when the clock said 5:45, I got up and opened our private balcony door to this site:

I know right! It was chilly and a little breezy, but dry! I gave Johnny a call realizing it was past 9 on the East Coast. After a few minutes outside in that clean air, I decided I needed a walk. I got dressed quietly, not wanting to wake Brandy. I wanted her to join me, but I felt that I needed some quiet time. I went downstairs and Bill and Susan were already hard at work preparing breakfast. I sat on the porch for moment or two writing in my journal. That was a first. I parked all my stuff by our car and grabbed the camera and headed for Forks Ave (basically Main St USA). The air was so crisp and clean. I was loving it. Right next to "The Cullen House" is the Police Station with Charlie's car out front. I love the little extras put forth by the town.

I didn't want to go to far since no one knew where I was. As I was walking I was snapping pictures left and right. I found this new little friend, he was so big that I thought at first it was a dead mouse.

His same is Sticky the Slug.

When I went to turn around to walk back to the B&B, thinking it was time for Brandy to wake up, I was greeted by the dawn sun!

Good Morning Forks!

The Miller Tree Inn, by dawns light.

It was also by dawns light that I really began to notice the green. It's just like in the books, everything really is green and squishy. I took way to many pictures. After heading back to our room, Brandy was starting to stir. We headed down to breakfast. Now, I'm not a breakfast person, at all. My breakfast comes in bar form most of the time. However, I wasn't staying at a Bed and Breakfast just for the bed. So here's what followed:

No, this wasn't breakfast. This is to 'tide you over' while Edwards Italian Eggs are being prepared. It's amazing we didn't gain 10 pounds while we were there.

This my friends, is Edwards Italian Eggs. I didn't eat the egg, simply because eggs upset my stomach. However, underneath that egg is marinara, pesto and crunchy bread. So freaking good. I had seconds. Bill walked around asking to clean up plates, refill coffee, and get more food. See the little clover that the tomato is on. When I left in the morning, I saw Susan coming in from the garden with them in her hands. Little touches, love it.

Well after breakfast, we were ready to start the Forks portion of our trip. We dressed and headed to "Bella loves book sale" at the library, it was your average book sale. Everyone was super friendly (warning, I'm going to say that a bunch more). We got some books for the kids. The books I bought had Port Angeles, WA stamped in them. But one book had great art work and inside it was stamped Forks, WA. I love it!.

I love the way boxes of books smell.

We then headed over to the hospital. We were greeted by a cute little chapel that looked as if it would only hold 10 people. Now, I know I had read that the sign was by the ER entrance. It wasn't. We walked around for way to long to see a dumb sign, laughing all the way. We finally found a man, who hops off his tractor to ask if we're looking for the sign. He walks us through to a path and tells us, sorry, but they had to move the sign awhile back. Apparently there was an actual emergency and the ER bay was blocked by Twilight Fans. So we found the sign. And he hopped back on his tractor.

We then went to Forks High School for our tour. This was possibly the cutest thing ever. The kids lead the tours and really seemed to want to be there on a Saturday morning. This town, well lives here in this town. They all seem really grateful for the tourists and extra income. We took the VIP tour, which meant we got a sticker and bracelet. :) Our tour guide was a senior cheerleader named Taylor. She was peppy! I always wondered about girls who liked the books and actually got to go to Forks High, she was one of them! There were again more extras! Each room was named for the teachers in the book, we even got a visit from Mr. Varner offering us to sit in bio class and earn the golden onion. :) The school is in the process of updating, so I'm happy we got to see at least part of the original building.

part of our VIP package :)

Again with the extras.

Possibly my favorite sign.

The funniest part of this tour is that Taylor took us into a room to show us the hooks on the wall. That right, the hooks where they hang their coats. (this was done in the movie). And yes, we took pictures of the hooks :)

The Golden Onion

The gym really looks like the movie.

Gear for Sale.

Tables for sunny days.

The school has updated to a digital sign. Of course they had to keep the wood one from the movie for all us insane people. There were some boys selling FHS stuff at the end of the tour. They were so sweet and kind.

We dropped off our goodies and headed by foot around Forks. We found an adorable church. Looking into Forks more from home. I found out that they have monthly community dinners at the this church and all kinds of activities here.

After popping into a few stores, we began to notice other fans arriving in town. These little girls were running around in matching shirts. They wanted their picture taken. I said to one "wow you have two sisters" to which she sweetly replied. "Three, I have a baby named Isabella" Love it!

Also, there were cut-outs in every store. They freaked me out every single time. I would see someone standing in the corner of my eye, not moving. One lady in La Push told us the police had actually called the owner of the shop because he thought people were in the store after hours.

We then headed to the Vendors in the Park in Tillicum Park. It was sunny, or not raining at least. There were tons of great crafts and Twilight gizmos. We had a group photo taken and watched the Twilight Look-a-Like contest. Edward from the years previous runs a business taking pictures of himself. We snuck some shots of him for free :)

The "real fake" Edward

I thought "James" was the best look alike.

They didn't charge for photos :)

There were lots of cool vendors, but one both really stood out to me. They had salvaged most of the old Forks High School. There were selling the bricks, the flooring, and the copper. They had made them into beautiful works of art. The flooring was made into brick holders, and book ends, and shadow boxes. The copper was turned into beautiful jewelry, I bought two pieces. All hand done right in Forks. The jewelry ladies were so sweet and nice explaining "well, my brother owns the town dump and when he got all the copper, I asked for it, and now we have all this jewelry" I love small towns.

We walked around a bit more and decided to head to La Push. But first we looked at some of the car decorations and sites along the road.

Sully's!

This just cracked me up!

Thank you, we felt very welcomed!

We also found Bella's truck. After trying to do the arm shots, we found more nice people to take our pictures.

Also, all through this time we were stopping for coffee and quiet time. We found a great little consignment/coffee shop. It was so nice to just sit and write :)

Part Two of our day is La Push, and believe me, La Push needs a blog of its own!

Forks Day One

Well, our trip is officially over. It was a beautiful 4 days. We started at 2:30 in the morning on Friday. Yes, you read that right, 2:30. My threat worked and Brandy and Jermaine and Sadie all made into the car. Little did they know, I totally told them we had to leave 30 minutes before we actually did (well I guess they know now). So I wasn't panicking when we when got started at 3:45am instead of 3:30, I knew we were good if we left at 4. Which was lucky considering we needed a 7-11 stop before we were 1 mile on the road :). We got to the airport with plenty of time. Baggage check was fun, right Brandy. She accidentally left a water bottle in her carry on. I know they have to be serious, but smile a little people! So we go on our 6:45 flight to Cleveland. It was a teeny plane, but my first flight in 14 years. We were finally on our way!!!!

The sun rising on the East Coast!

All of my worrying and fretting about late planes and lost luggage were for nothing. Our connecting flight was just enough time to grab a bite to eat and get in line. This plane was huge and packed! Our seat mate was nice enough, though. We made the poor man move three different times to use the restroom.

On the plane to Seattle! Thankful I remembered to turn off the flash.

The time changes and current times were weird. It felt like it was MUCH longer than the stated time. Plus we were hungry and antsy to get going. (me very much) We did have to wait at Hertz for our car (to be fair they did offer to upgrade) but we were slightly annoyed that our car was not ready when we booked it nine months previous. However, it all worked out. The car (Lola) was awesome and had a great GPS (Lilly) to go along with Brandy's Iphone (Sophie) We were not getting lost!

Lunch at Vince's in Seattle

After a stop for lunch we were feeling better. I got a Caprise Salad, it was yummy! Brandy had to find some coffee (I was getting rather antsy at this point) I did feel badly that we flew across the country and into the coffee capital of the US and she had to go to a Starbucks in a grocery store. But finally, we were on our way!!! We were tired, but excited. We followed Lilly's instruction to the ferry. I've never been on a ferry, so I was excited. We missed several time slots and were hopeful we would make this one. There was ONE car in front of us and then the line stopped moving. We thought we had missed it, but no, they just hadn't started loading yet. We had made it and were on our way!!!

Entrance to the Edmonds/Kingston Ferry.

We were able to get out and walk around. The thing was huge, tons of seating, but it was the decks we were heading for! The air was so clean and cool (ie, freezing) but it was so refreshing after the horrible humid summer we had.

Did I mention it was windy?

Heading there!

 The trip was short but gave us the refresher we needed to finish the last leg of our 3,143 miles journey. After getting off the ferry, we past a dozen "cute little coffee shops" and finally stopped in New Townsend. She coffeed up and I guzzled a mix in. This town was the start of something new. Politeness! The Seattle people were nice, but these people were over the top! It was so amazing. So after that detour, we headed along down 101 through Port Angeles! We were giddy at this point! We were getting close. Then the magic happened! We made a curve in the road and suddenly were alongside a lake! The most beautiful, serene, green lake I'd ever seen. After trying to get a dozen pictures out the window, we found a turn out and stopped.

Lake Crescent.

I even took a video of this place without narrative, just to capture it's beauty. Just amazing, so still, so quiet. We stayed here on the side of the road reveling in the peace. This was just a teaser of the peace that was awaiting us in Forks. We also got some really cool shots of the mountains on the drive.

Somewhere between Kingston and Forks.

Finally we see the turn off for FORKS!

We screamed like, well, girls. We found it pretty funny that as we headed to "the rainiest place in the continental US" that the sun would be shining.

Sun setting in the West Coast.

Then we saw the lights, those horrible blue lights. We were getting pulled over coming off the mountain. I was digging out the registration, she was finding her ID. Then we meet him, the nicest police officer ever! He tells us (in a slight Canadian accent) That we were going 10 over and "that's not too bad." He wanted us to be safe on our journey "Wow, you're from Maryland" "Are you here for the Twilight thing?" "Where are you staying?" "Oh, they are the nicest people, you were lucky to get a room there this weekend." "Now, calm down, I'm not writing you a ticket, I wouldn't want to ruin your weekend, I just want you to stay safe." And we were off. see I told you these people were amazingly nice. Brandy wouldn't let me get a picture of his car. :)

About five minutes later, we see it!

Forks Welcomes US!!!!

Courtes of nice man.

 We stop, run up the hill giggling all the way. We take each others pictures. A guy stops asks us if we want our picture taken together. He says he wants his too. He said he was just on the way through and wanted to make a friend jealous. I didn't believe him. However, it was so nice to be doing something Twilight related without getting those looks. :) We found our B&B The Miller Tree Inn also known as The Cullen House, without a problem.

Our innkeepers Bill and Susan greeted us at the door with smiles. Took our bags to our room. We came back downstairs and saw all the amenities of this fabulous place. It was decorated for Bella's Birthday.

Happy 19th Birthday Bella, again.

People sent them these caps to make this, like in the movie.

Our room, all the way at the top.

I was very excited to meet Pocket Edward. He has a blog at The Cullen House. I've been following it since I knew we would be staying here. 

 

We then made a dash for dinner at the only Mexican place. It was really good.

Our mini fridge was stocked a few drinks, but Brandy wanted wine and I wanted water, so went to Thriftway! Which is next door to Forks Outfitters! Just like in the book.

And after a 20 hour trip, I crashed, which is a good thing, because oh, what the next day would bring. :)

FORKS!!!

So I've been back for a week and I swear everyday that I'll blog. It's so hard. My camera didn't load in order for some reason, so I have to sift through ONE THOUSAND AND FORTY EIGHT photos to upload. I'll get to it, I promise. I leave you with my link to Brandy's Blog about the first day of our trip. Forks Day One!

Little Miss' First Birthday!

My first pink cake.

We had a birthday party for Little Miss on Sunday. It's the first first birthday we've have in 4 years. Also the first girl's party I've ever had! We had a great time. A few friends, lots of kids, and gobs of pink. I can't post pictures with her face, but here's a few others.

pink and brown!

Princess High Chair.

The porch!

Some of the kiddos!

:)

Jackson saying grace!

Present time.

The birthday crew, this is only three families!

She loved this blankey!

The 'small' toy a friend had for her...hmmm