Olympic National Park: Part I: Camp Life, Forks, & La Push

(Because Bob took so many pictures I am going to have to break this trip up into at least 3 different posts.)

 Olympic National Park was pretty cool. Ok, it was really, really cool. I want to go back, like this weekend. I officially love the state of Washington. (I don't suppose that my favorite person in this world, my grandfather, having grown up in Washington has anything to do with it?)  It really is a cool state. (At least the parts I have been to.)

The park itself is 4 hours from our home in Portland. Which is perfect. You don't feel like you are ready to burst out of the car because you have been in it for too long, but yet you are far enough away that you feel like you are on vacation.


The campsite that we had was tied for first place as my favorite campsite ever. (The Grand Canyon campsite we stayed at is my other most favorite campground.) The sites were spacious and private while not being too private. We were close to the bathroom which was perfect for Sarah. The campground was quiet in the evenings and mornings which is rare for campgrounds. There is usually one campsite that keeps everyone else up because they are partying like rocks stars at night and one campsite whose family rouses before dawn with all the exuberance and noise that the rest of us save for mid-morning/early afternoon. But not at this campground. There were no party animals nor loud early risers. Plus is it was awesome because we could hear the waves the entire time we were at our campsite. It was so nice to stay on the beach and also be surrounded by beautiful trees.

Sarah really enjoyed listening to the Twilight book series and so we had to take her to Forks, La Push, and Port Angeles since we were so close to all three towns. It was interesting when we got to Forks to find out that none of the filming for the first movie (or any subsequent for that matter) actually happened in Forks, or even in the state of Washington. Almost all of the filming for the first movie took place in Oregon. A lot of it in the Portland area. The rest of the movies were filmed in British Columbia and Brazil. (I think that there was some filming in New Orleans as well.) The welcome center volunteers told our family that Washington, at the time, would not work with the film crew in terms of being willing to close down towns/roads, etc for filming, so the location was moved to Oregon. I am not sure how true this is, but it's what we were told. It was still cool to go to the places that Stephenie Meyer talked about in her books. All three of these were towns were tiny by most town standards, but that is what made them all the cooler. You could see the positive impact that tourism has had on these tiny towns which seem to lie on the cusp of poverty.

The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there. The first night was cold, but each subsequent night warmed up a bit so that by the end of our camping trip the nights were warm enough to not need several layers of clothing in which to sleep.

Our camp site

A tree in our camp site that the girls loved to climb on when they weren't hanging out in the hammock Bob bought them.

Bella's truck from the Twilight Movies

This was taken at the Forks welcome center.

One of La Push's beaches. (The only one that allowed dogs on it.)

Drift wood and a fallen tree that were found on the beach.

La Push beach

More La Push Beach

The sign reads: 'No Vampires Beyond This Line. Treaty Line'

Sunset from the beach that we camped at.

Playing with Sammy while Lily is pouting because no one is paying attention to her.

Getting ready to make S'mores

Just hanging out at the campsite