Happy Monday, everybody.
Last Monday saw me returning home from a road trip. My cousin, Brenna, and I decided to be total dorks and drive to Forks, WA to look at all the touristy Twilight themed stuff. It ended up being a great tour of the Olympic Penninsula and a bit of a trip down memory lane.
I’m originally from a small town near Aberdeen, called Montesano, WA. I grew up there and lived in the same house with my family until I was 21. During our road trip, I got to revisit lots of places I’d been to as a child. It’s nice to appreciate things again as an adult and I enjoyed taking in the beauty of the area I will always consider home.
We stopped to see the world’s largest Sitka Spruce at Lake Quinalt. My dad had a band when I was little and they used to play at Lake Quinalt. We would stay out there for the whole weekend when that happened. I recognized some things about the place, and could almost see the sailboats on the water that lived in my memory. The place seemed smaller than I remember.
We stopped at another big tree, the Big Cedar. This made us laugh — from the world’s largest Sitka Spruce to a big cedar. How vague. We really only stopped because we thought it was so funny, but it turned out to be a pretty cool tree. The trunk was fantastically gnarly and it was hollow inside.
We also stopped at Ruby Beach, just before the 101 turns inland from the coast. I’d never been to this beach before, but heard it mentioned many times as a great one. There was lots of driftwood collected at the bottom of the trail leading down to the beach, making quite the obstacle course, but we did it.
This was all on Saturday. We stayed that night in Port Angeles, then headed to Forks and La Push on Sunday morning. We got a list of the Twilight themed places and drove around taking pictures of it all. I got a bit burnt out on the picture taking thing after awhile, not really caring very much about it. We went into this shop called “Dazzled by Twilight” which sold all Twilight related things. Touristy souvenier heaven. I really don’t get the appeal of buying mass produced items that are meant to reflect my love or adoration for something or to serve as a sentitmental memento; I don’t get why autographs are so coveted. So I felt a little blah and weirded out about being in this shop. I did manage to play along a little though, and purchased a small magnet.
The next venture was my favorite. We decided to drive up to Neah Bay and Cape Flattery (the most NW point in Washington state), something I’d never done before. It was about an hour and a half drive along the very windy northern coast, then a 1/2 mile hike out to the Cape. It was a beautiful vantage point. I loved it!
I have this weird thing I can only describe as imaginary vertigo. Being in high places doesn’t affect or frighten me, but if I imagine myself somewhere high up, I immediately fall to the ground below. For instance, if I imagine walking out onto a balcony, the barrier immediately dissolves and I fall off. I know, it’s weird. I walked to the edge of a cliff on our hike to look down to the rocky waters below. For a split second, my mind warned me that if I leaned on that tree it would melt away and I’d plummet to my death. I then reminded myself that that’s only what happens in crazy imaginary vertigo land, tested the tree’s stability and was fine. 
We spent the night again in Port Angeles, then left early Monday morning for the 4 1/2 hour drive back to Portland.
