“Well, I’m so sorry that I can’t be the right kind of monster for you, Bella.”
-Stephenie Meyer, New Moon
“NO VAMPIRES BEYOND THIS POINT” The sign, although weathered and graffitied by a decade’s worth of passers-by, couldn’t have been clearer in its purpose. Vince and I were leaving Forks, Washington, and entering La Push. In real life terms, that meant that we were now on Quileute tribal land. But in the Twilight universe, we were stepping into werewolf territory as we crossed over the treaty line that the Cullen family isn’t allowed to pass. Just beyond the treaty line sign, was a danger meter, like the kind usually meant to warn of fire danger. Except this sign warned that the vampire threat level had apparently tipped into the red “Danger” zone today.
It would be difficult to overstate the indelible mark that Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels have made on the Olympic Peninsula, from Twilight gift shops, to a Twilight museum, to these vampire warning signs. The phenomenon that was Twilight seems to have put Forks and the surrounding areas on the map. But believe it or not, Vince and I did not come to Forks because we are particularly big fans of the series. Sure, I can enjoy the camp of it all as much as the next person, but I wanted to visit the Olympic Peninsula for the snow peaked mountains, rugged coastline, and mysterious rainforest. We’d already been to the mountains the previous day, and now the coast and the forest were awaiting us, starting with a visit to Rialto Beach and La Push.
The morning air was still cool when we stepped foot on the wild shore of the Pacific. Low tide was about an hour away, plenty of time to walk a couple miles down the beach to where we knew that rocky tide pools were likely already emerging from beneath the receding waves. Instead of sand, Rialto Beach was covered in gray stones that had been washed smooth by the forces of the tides. Skeletal, bleached trunks of trees that had once stood tall and proud in the surrounding forest now littered the shore. There were driftwood forts built up amongst the rubble, although all it would take would be one rogue wave, and the structures would rejoin the incongruous piles of wooden bones.
Vince and I started walking northward along the shore, balancing on top of long logs whenever we wanted a break from stepping on the rocky earth. Eventually the rocks gave way to pebbles, then the pebbles to coarse sand. The driftwood also became more sparse. We’d left the immediate area of the Quillayute River, which is largely responsible for the the tree graveyard near its mouth. Frothy waves licked at the shore, leaving white lines of foam behind as they receded back into the ocean. The landscape was made of shades of gray as though the color had been leeched from it. It was stark and lovely, but up ahead, the silhouettes of sea stacks loomed above the sand, reminding me that the best was yet to come.
After two miles that felt more like four-sand is always frustratingly awkward to walk on-we arrived at the base of a set of twin sea stacks that rose up from the ocean and pointed toward the sky. The glass-thin waters of the receding tide were a perfect mirror to reflect an image of the two pillars onto the beach. We’d finally arrived at a good spot to start tide pooling, but I was too engrossed by the dramatic landscape to start searching the rocky pools that had formed in the tide’s absence.
Vince on the other hand, starting poking around the pools immediately, apparently unimpressed with the sea stacks. He disappeared behind a large boulder, while I admired the scenery, hopping across slippery rocks to find a better vantage point. As I knelt down to get an angle I wanted for a photograph, I serendipitously encountered my first tide pool creatures. Underneath a large boulder clung a cluster of ochre sea stars in shades of purple and orange.
I managed to wave Vince over to show him my find before we continued hopping across rocks together. Up ahead of us was Hole-in-the-Wall, which is a geological feature that is exactly what its name would suggest, a hole in the middle of a large sea cliff that protrudes into the ocean. At high tide, Hole-in-the-Wall is inaccessible, but at low tide, you can walk right through it, and we were planning to do just that. We kept an eye out for more critters as we picked our way over the rocky shore to Hole-in-the-Wall. Through its opening, we could see more tide pools in front of an evergreen forest on the other side. As we passed underneath, I found my first giant green anemone of the day in a shallow pool.
Hole-in-the-Wall has a reputation for being one of the best spots to look for tide pool wildlife in Olympic National Park, so Vince and I started checking the shallow pools in earnest once we walked through the arch. What we found did not disappoint. Sea stars and anemones clung to the sides of stone, and the occasional crab scuttled along the bottoms of the pools. Each tide pool was its own self-contained miniature ecosystem full of life and color.
We poked around in the pools for at least an hour, marveling at the beautiful, almost alien beings that occupied them. But eventually we knew it was time to start walking back to La Push. I could have happily stayed at the beach all day, but we still had a lot more on our agenda and we had to get moving. On the way back, I took one more wistful look at the dramatic sea stacks, and Vince brought me to an amazing pool filled with anemones that he’d found earlier.
By the time we made it back to our car, we were ready to grab an early lunch, so we drove into La Push, and got burgers at a food truck that was parked at First Beach. As we ate, I couldn’t help but think about how this is the beach the Bella and her friends visit in Twilight. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t get Twilight off my mind. I beginning to realize that just as Bella had to make a choice between Edward and Jacob, I would have to make a choice between the ocean and the rainforest. Which would win out as my favorite? The answer remained to be seen, but it was definitely time to find out.
We finished up our lunch and then got back in the car to drive to the Hoh Rainforest section of Olympic National Park. Forks happened to be right along our route, and now that it wasn’t late evening or early morning, the little town had come to life with the bustle of tourists. Vince and I stopped to poke around the gift shops along the main highway. We found a good mixture of Sasquatch and Twilight themed merchandise, and bought a handful of little trinkets to bring home. But for some reason I couldn’t help but feel like I was being watched as I shopped.
I managed to shrug off the feeling that there was a hungry vampire lurking behind me as Vince and I drove out of town towards the rainforest. Although we’d been in and out of forests for almost our entire trip so far, this one felt different. Even from the road, I could see that the trees were getting mossier and the forest was getting deeper as we neared the park entrance station.
It had been easy to find parking at the beach that morning since we arrived early, but since the rainforest was our second stop of the day, we did not experience the same luck. Upon arriving at the entrance station, we found a line of cars waiting to get inside. The park was operating on a one-in, one-out basis, so cars were only able to enter if another car was leaving. Thankfully, this line went a lot faster than we were expecting and soon, we were parked and ready to hit the trail. There are three trailheads behind the Hoh Rainforest visitor center, and we planned to hike all of them (although we would not do the Hoh River Trail in its entirety).
We started with the most popular, and most famous trail, the Hall of Mosses. This short, 0.8 mile loop is known for having some of the mossiest, lushest greenery in the park, and would give us a sample of how verdant a temperate rainforest can be.
When you’ve done enough hiking in the Pacific Northwest, you start to get used to seeing moss-covered tree branches. But as we entered the Hall of Mosses, I realized that I had genuinely never seen anything that compared to how mossy this forest was. Verdant moss practically dripped from every branch, and thick ferns curled up from the forest floor.
Along the trail, we learned about nurse logs. These form when tree seeds germinate on a fallen log instead of on the ground. As the new trees grow, their roots start to encase the dead tree. The dead tree continues to rot, eventually leaving the younger trees lined up in a row with their roots intertwined. We found a stand of trees that had grown on a nurse log, and were now connected by a network of above-ground roots that gleamed in the late afternoon sun.
A couple areas of the trail were even greener and mossier than the rest of it, which didn’t even seem possible. These alcoves looked like they were frozen in time, just like the fictional vampires that call this forest home. I could easily picture this grove looking exactly the same when dinosaurs roamed the earth as it does now.
Even though the hall of mosses trail is less than a mile long, Vince and I spent a lot of time there because it was so peaceful and beautiful. When we finally finished the loop, we started off down the Spruce Nature trail in search of Roosevelt Elk. By now the afternoon was turning into evening, and I hoped that wildlife would begin to emerge if we stayed in the forest for long enough. We had no such luck, but instead enjoyed another loop through the magical Hoh Rainforest where we found more plush flora, and some more nurse logs along the 1.2 mile loop.
There was only one trail left to go when we met back up at the start of the loop. The Hoh River Trail is 18 and half miles long in one direction, so we knew there was no way we’d get to walk the whole thing. We’d just hike until we reached the river and turn back around. The first river access was about a mile from the trailhead, so we passed through more ferny forest until we finally found an opening to step out onto the rocky bank of the Hoh River. The clearing the river provided gave us a clear view of the distant Olympic Mountain Range, which lay beyond the cold, aqua waters of the river.
Instead of returning to the trail, we followed the winding bank of the river a ways before deciding it was time to turn around so we could make it back to the car before dusk. The sinking sun illuminated the ferns with its backlighting all the way back to the visitor center. When we arrived at the parking lot, I checked my Strava and realized we’d walked ten miles that day, and I’d barely even noticed it. Everything we’d seen was so wonderful, the miles felt like nothing at all.
We drove out of the rainforest and back towards Forks, stopping for dinner at a bar along the way. As I dug into my veggie wrap, I thought about the two very different sections of the park that we’d explored that day. They’d both been really amazing, but which of them won the day for me? The rainforest was so soft and inviting, and the coastline harsh and wild. But then, the coast was inhabited by fascinating creatures, and the most we’d seen in the forest was a gray jay. In the end, just like Bella, I chose my first love. The ocean is simply my favorite place to be. No matter how astounding other environments are, I always feel at peace by the water and exploring its depths.
Luckily for me, we would have one more chance to visit the coast before our trip came to an end. The next morning, Vince and I packed up our things and left Forks behind. We had to drive back to Oregon to catch our flight home, but our route ran right alongside the southern coast of Olympic National Park, so we got to make one last stop at Ruby Beach to take a short walk and fit in some last-minute tide pooling.
A short, windswept trail led us down to the beach, where we joined a veritable crowd of other tide-poolers and beachgoers. We followed cedar creek passed piles of driftwood and out to another mirror-like tidal flat. We walked across the sand until we reached a massive sea stack, and then spent a few minutes looking for more sea stars and anemones at its base.
There were more of the same creatures from yesterday tucked away in the rocks, but this time the tide was coming in instead of going out. Frothy waves kept flooding back into the pools, and the anemone’s tentacles swayed with the flow of the water. There wasn’t much time to search the pools today though, and soon we retreated through the sun-bleached driftwood and back up to the parking lot to start our long drive.
By dinner time, we were crossing the bridge over the Columbia River, and were back in Oregon where we spent one last evening at our friends Amy and Andrew’s house. Then we took a relaxing last day together before me and Vince’s evening flight. We went peach picking in the morning, and then we all went out to our friends Brian and Jessalyn’s house for a big group dinner.
The sun was setting by the time Vince and I arrived at PDX for our overnight flight. I wasn’t eager to leave, especially since we’d had such a fun week exploring the Pacific Northwest, and more importantly visiting so many great friends. My one consolation prize came when I settled into my seat on the plane and discovered that Twilight was one of my options for in-flight entertainment. Naturally I started the film, and was happy to get to one last look at some of the amazing locations we’d just visited put to film.
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