After losing two summers to extended truck repairs which total 8K and an additional 5K of work on the trailer, we finally got to do an extended trip in late August to northern Washington. Most of this was spent with Judy’s family in the Skagit Valley. There was a family reunion, a memorial service for a nephew and a drunken three days with Judy’s brother where she discovered edibles. “You ate a whole one! We only take a quarter.”
After that episode, we decided to spend a few days exploring the Olympic National Park. Drove up to Hurricane Ridge where at the top you can look down to see Port Angles and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to view the utopia of Victoria Canada, basking in the sun, on the three days a year when it can be seen from this spot.
Oh Canada, where people own their homes. Where children are beloved and even though they own lots of guns, they never shoot each other, unless by accident, and even then, they get fixed up for free as they have health care. I would move there is a second except I hear it is full of Canadians! Did you know that they don’t have dollars! They have loonies and toonies and never gave Hanna/Barbara one red cent in royalties. And both of these silly assed monetary units are coins! The loonie has a dodo bird on one side and Queen Elizabeth on the other. Not the good Elizabeth who kicked the Spanish Armadas ass, but the other one, the frumpy one who has two weird dogs with no legs. Canadians also celebrate thanksgiving in October! Bunch of weirdos! But I digress…
The drive to Hurricane ridge is up and up and up but is only 17 miles long where you climb to 5000 feet. It takes an hour to do this. It should take only 45 minutes, but you have to constantly slow down to pass bicyclists who are peddling uphill around blind corners. What kind of idiot would do this? I was exhausted by the time I got to the top and I was driving the Captain. Come to think of it, I saw two dozen biking up, but NONE on the way down.
Judy was not thrilled with the drive, especially the lack of guard rails. I did try and reassure her that if for some reason I drove off the cliff, that there were enough trees that we would only roll over more than 3 or 4 times before a tree would stop our descent. Unlike the bikers who due to their smaller dimensions would tumble to the bottom never to be found as their live but broken bodies would be carried off by big foots for unspeakable acts of sexual perversion. I didn’t tell Judy this as it would only add to angst and I really did not want to go back to Port Angelis (aka, the home of winos, dingbats and riffraff..Opps sorry that is Newport, Oregon, my bad). Lucky for me I stole a few edibles from John, so she was soon back to the Giggles Judy.
After Hurricane Ridge we moved to the Elks lodge in Forks, WA. Wonderful RV spot with 30 and 50 amp hook ups and water for $20 a night on a huge grassy lot where Kaylee can chase a chuck it ball to her heart’s content. This compared to similar amenities at $60 a night RV park in Port Angeles where I had to keep her on a leash AT ALL TIMES!
Forks is an interesting town. It started out as a logging town. But as with any natural resource-based economy that relies on the mining of 100-year-old trees, what do you do when the old growth timber runs out. Making matters worse was the endangered species act which listed the spotted owl. For those of you not around in the 80’s, the spotted owl is a denizen of old growth forests, where a single pair needs about 3000 acres to nest and hunt. As a result, thousands of acres of forest were taken out of lumber production. The result was a massive protest of the Forks locals with a third of the town traveling to Olympia to protest in person. We drove through Forks during this period where a visible protest symbol was to display a green tennis ball on their autos radio antenna. Not sure how they came up with that one. Regardless of how that came about, we didn’t stay long as I was employed by EPA and feared loss of my own balls if discovered. Going from what the locals claimed to be the logging capital of the world to no active mills must have been quite a shock. However, blaming the endangered species act was not the only reason. The logging industry in the Pacific Northwest was in decline long before the spotted owl. Kind of hard to replace 100-year-old trees in a timely manner after they have been made into 2 X 4s. I grew up in the Rogue River Valley where at one time there were over 20 sawmills and plywood plants. I am pretty sure that they are all gone, and the spotted owl was not an issue. Ditto with my current town, Waldport, OR, which had two active mills when I move here, both gone now. Still the last surviving sawmill in Forks did not shut down until 2014. I am not sure that there are any active mills near there today, although in 2022 one of the defunct mills was bought by a company, Sustainable Green Team, ltd, which pledged to revamp it by 2024 hiring 100 locals. Apparently, this is not going to happen as the city of Forks is now suing them. Forks should have known by the company name. No real logging company would have named themselves Sustainable Green Team. Forks you just got punked and all of us gay loving transtesticals are laughing rainbows out of our over stretched rectums. But the problem remained. How was Forks going to survive without raping the forest. They needed a miracle.
The miracle arrived in the unlikely shape of Stephenie Meyer, an American author who wrote a series of romance novels involving vampires and native American shape shifters which sold over 160 million copies and has been translated into 49 languages. And then the movies came out. As vampires have a problem with sunlight, she did her research and located the cloudiest, foggiest, wettest, and most miserable town in the US. Yep, it’s Forks. She could have picked a different town to base her novels in. She could have made up a town as it is a work of fiction. But she didn’t and Forks survived, sort of.
For those of you fortunate enough not to have read the novels or seen the movies, it is a love story between Bella, a 17-year-old and Edward, a 100+ year old vampire who looks like he is only 17. Both attend Forks HS (go Spartans). She is a real student, and he is a scowling, pouting, weirdo with sticky up hair, who initially appears to despise her. Apparently, he has graduated HS multiple times as part of his disguise. Of course, she falls madly in love with him and the feeling turned out to be mutual. Basically, it is slightly modified Halmark Movie without any recognizable has-been Hollywood stars but in the films favor it has a slight plot twist. Edward is a pedophile! I guess that’s why the Halmark channel declined the movie script. The only way I know any of this is that Judy forced me to watch the first movie. Somehow, I managed to watch the whole thing with only the aid of a single bottle of cheap scotch and a handy barf bag. I can only give the movie 2 stars as it has no NAZIs, machine guns, or naked women. The vampire bit might have made it slightly more interesting, but it failed miserably in that department. Vampire movies should have darkly handsome villains with big fangs biting well-endowed women in skimpy night gowns. There should be creepy castles, black caped guys sleeping in coffins, and spooky landscapes (not dripping wet and moss covered). The movie had none of these. Edward was part of a vampire family that had sworn off human flesh and only drank the blood of innocent forest creatures. Does the ASPCA know about this? As a final insult to the vampire genre, they played baseball! But they could only do this during thunderstorms. WTF! My guess is they had to do this because the sound of their bats striking the balls was so loud that it would attract too much attention, so that they needed the masking sound of thunderclaps to hide their activities. Did Ms. Meyer ever watch a baseball game? How many times do the bats break during a MLB game? Hitting a baseball at the speed of sound would break a wooden bat every time. I understand why there is no crying in baseball, but no physics?
I was a little surprised by how Forks was depicted. The town of Forks and the surrounding areas looks nothing like what was presented in the movie. That was because all of the forest landscapes, houses, restaurants, and high school scenes were filmed in Oregon. Not only is the real town of Forks not very photogenic, but it was also not amenable to movie making due to the shitty weather, lack of services for large film crews, and no financial incentives from the State of Washington. So why do tens of thousands of “Twilight” people travel to Butt Fuck Egypt then take a left turn down a shitty road to this isolated hole in the anus of town without a camel to ride and nowhere to go if there was one.
Don’t take my word for it, try googling “Things to do in Forks”. One of these lists included 25 must-dos for tourists. I won’t give you the whole exhaustive list as many are just advertisements for local restaurants and others are things that are miles away from Forks. But here are some highlights of what you can actually do and see in Forks and why I skipped them.
Forks Timber Museum. I have been to a few timber museums. They usually display pictures of proud loggers cutting down 1000-year-old trees. That is nothing to be proud of or feel any nostalgia for.
Tillicum Park, For Games and Sports. I can throw the ball for my dog in my own yard and won’t feel the need to pick up the dog do-do while it still fresh.
Learn History at John’s Beachcombing Museum. This museum displays garbage collected from the beach that is then arranged in an artistic manner. I get the same thing in my yard every year when out of town friends and relatives come to visit. They collect clam shells, sand dollar pieces, little rocks and 8-foot-long pieces of bull kelp. I have no desire to view this same garbage no matter how it is displayed by John. And how does beach detritus teach you anything about history?
Stay at the Historical Swan House. You can stay in the house portrayed in the movie, but it is located in St. Helens, Oregon. The house in Forks appears to be a private residence.
Take a snap at Bella’s truck. Yes, you can take a selfie with Bella’s rusty red chevy. And you have a choice to pose with the one described in the books, a 1953, or the one in the movies, a 1963. You could also visit a junk yard or my neighbor’s yard for the same effect.
One more bitch about the movie. Bella is gifted that rusty POS Chevy by her father. She is a 17-year-old girl who is thrilled with a rusting out pickup with a standard transmission. Not only that but in the movie, she is also given stupid instructions on how to double clutch. Then she happily drives off to high school. Bull Shit! In this day and age a 17-year-old in her first car would have no clue how to shift gears. I have had experience with this one. I spent 2 hours trying to teach my 15-year-old granddaughter how to drive a car with a standard transmission. Had to wear a neck brace for a week and years later I still wake in cold sweat reliving that nightmare. I can’t imagine adding double clutching to that teaching failure. First of all, double clutching in the 63 Chevy was not needed as by that time all models had synchromesh transmissions. I can only assume that this was a movie editing mistake as the book’s 53 Chevy may have required the double clutch technique to down shift. Double clutching involved first pressing in the clutch and putting the gear box into neutral, then removing your foot from the clutch while pushing the gas pedal down to increase engine RPM. Then the clutch is depressed again, and a lower gear engaged while maintaining engine RPM. This procedure needs to be accomplished in less than 1 second. Mastering it requires a lot of practice. In the movie she was told to “to push the clutch in twice or it won’t start”???? What in the wide world of sports was that about. Did this lack of authenticity ruin the movie for me? Oh, hell no, it was ruined long before that bit. My observation about this particular specific lack of realism did spark a conversation with my wife.
Judy: “That might be what that line was about, but you need to read the book to verify it before putting it in your blog”
Me: “I already gave up one of my testicles when you forced me to buy a minivan and now you want me to cut off my other one?
Judy: “Might as well, you no longer use it”.
Regardless of how predictable the movie was and by my estimation the book, tens of thousands of Twilight fans from all over the world descend on Forks every year to soak up the ambiance and pay inflated prices to do so. When we visited there were hundreds of non-locals of every ethnicity walking the streets, shopping for touristy junk, dining at the local fast-food places and buying necessities at inflated prices at the Forks Outfitters.
The Forks Outfitters?? Never been to an outfitter before. I was so excited. I pictured it as something out of one of those old Tarzan movies, where you could buy dugout canoes and rent half naked tribesmen to carry your safari supplies on their head as you headed into the vast African savanna to hunt elephants for their ivory. Maybe, if I was really lucky there might even be half naked tribeswomen as well. In reality it was a Thriftway grocery store combined with an Ace hardware.
One of the motels in town advertised “Twilight themed rooms”. Instead of a bed, do you sleep in a coffin? And what if, as I am, you are afraid of vampires? I would hope that they would also offer non-vampire rooms which would have a squirt gun filled with holy water along with the Gideon bible in the bedside table. Perhaps they could also offer you a garlic lei at check in. Then I watched the movies and discovered that Edward did not sleep in a coffin, he didn’t even sleep! Yet another revisionist departure from real vampire stories.
Perhaps the silliest thing to do in Forks is to take a selfie in front of the “Welcome to Forks” sign. This was on several lists as one of the must things to do. There is nothing unusual about this sign other than several groups of people are always waiting their turn get a pic. We finally managed this daring feat for ourselves when we met a family that had traveled from a foreign land to visit this sign. They were kind enough to grant me permission to include this pic in my blog. Like many of the Twilighters we met that day, they were young and fashionably dressed. We parted as friends as I wished them a safe journey back to their exotic home in Portland, Oregon.
In contrast to the Twilighters are the locals. I have never seen a more concentrated level of Trump signs, flags and then there were the bill boards. Two of these were located in what I will charitably call less than prime spots. The irony of the two pics below speaks volumes. Abandoned trailers and a pile of garbage as backgrounds for Make America Great slogans sure make me want to vote red.
Although I was never able to have an in-depth conversation with any of these rabid Trumpers, there are plenty of internet articles where their resentment of the Twilight tourist boom comes out of the closet. They feel that this incursion takes away from their hometown vibe. Sometimes this undercurrent of fear and stupidity boils to the surface.
After the murder of George Floyd, there were numerous BLM marches and in some cases, looting and vandalism. Rumors were rampant that ANTFA was coming into white areas to kick some cracker ass. A retired Forks logger, Dan Larson, thought that Forks would be next and that busloads of rioters were on their way. Larson posted. “Forks could be next.” A former prison guard in town joined the cry. “Forks let’s get ready to rumble. Lock and load.”
Into this paranoia a large white school bus (aka Big Burtha) rolled into town and into the grocery parking lot. Inside was a mixed-race family and two dogs. Several vehicles heeding Larson’s warning followed it into the parking lot. The driver of the bus, a dark-skinned man introduce himself to some of these pseudo minute men and told them that he and his family had come to Forks to camp. A white woman had left the bus to buy something in the store and when she returned to the bus, it headed out of town closely followed by the convoy of armed and alarmed Forks locals. When Big Burtha pulled off the highway north of town to boondock, the would-be defenders of white virtue blocked them from leaving by cutting down trees into the roadway. Then there were multiple gun shots fired in the air to fully terrify this innocent family. Eventually the police arrived, and the family was allowed to leave. And these were not the typical over weight, middle aged, silly assed militia members that we might expect in Montana or Idaho as high school students appeared to responsible for cutting down the trees blocking in Big Burtha.
Soon after the incident, the Forks chamber of commerce issued a statement saying this did not represent the Forks community, and that they had full confidence in local law enforcement to get to the bottom of it. Four years later no one has been charged, no trials, no justice. Makes me want to camp near Forks.
This shit is still in Forks, lurking just beneath the surface. The locals view the current vibrant display of youth and diversity as a threat even though this influx is now the life blood of the town. An article in The Times of London got some of these people to talk. They were told things like “there are odd characters roaming around”, and that local “kids will never know the quiet little town that I grew up in”. “I saw someone in Sully’s Burgers with sharpened teeth and the local hardware store sells out of flashlight all the time, as people buy them to go vampire hunting in the woods”, and the interviewee went on to note that she was not against progress or tourism but gets “annoyed that the streets are clogged with cars”. Give me a fucking break you red neck bitch. Welcome to what I go through every summer on the Oregon Coast, and I guarantee we get a lot more than sixty thousand visitors every year not to mention that my streets are clogged with RVs. Yes, I am happy when the tourist season is over, but my town could not survive without it. Personally, I have had lots of fun and educational conversations with strangers from foreign lands, even Californians. I guarantee you that the guy with the sharpened teeth would have something interesting to say. Just make sure that you are in a public place before initiating the conversation.
Forksters are living in the past. A past that is gone like the old growth timber that they mined. As a final example, I called the Forks Elks lodge to inquire about camping there, I got a recorded message. The message told me when the lodge would be opened where to camp if we were in an RV and then… there was a statement at the end of the message about the how government covid restrictions were causing them problems. I made this call in August of 2024. They didn’t change their rambling message in four years.
In the five days we were there, the lodge was never open. On our final night we walked over as there were cars in the parking lot for the first time. They had rented out the lodge for bingo, but the lounge was closed. I have stayed at dozens of Elks lodges from Arlington Virginia to Needles California. Once in Ukiah California we and the bartender were the only ones there. They are great places to find out about local attractions, great deals on trailer tires and places to meet people who have become distant friends. I have found memories of three dog Dug and greatly miss foot and a half Don from the North Vagas (in the hood) lodge where Judy introduced them all to mimosas. Then there was the Navajo member in the Gallop New Mexico lodge who told us to visit the world heritage park Chaco Canyon, one of the most mystic and awesome places on the planet. Forks… not so much. But what should one expect from a town who lives off the flesh of frictional vampires.
I did learn one additional fact at Forks. Why has one can proved that big foot is real? Sometimes answers to important questions are so apparent that you have to smack yourself in the forehead’.
