trip to seattle

22 February, 2009

on our last day in seattle, we went to pike's place market and out to the woodinville wine country. it is only 8 miles from downtown seattle, and i don't know what we were expecting, but we just decided against going to any of the wineries. i think that the olympic peninsula wineries the day before spoiled us! except for a few, the wineries in woodinville were located in industrial park offices, kind of strange. they get all of their grapes from eastern washington, so it isn't like napa and sonoma where there are sprawling estates. we did go to the red hook brewery and got a beer and it was very nice. we then went to see slumdog millionaire (loved it) and went to cheesecake factory for dinner. it was a great visit to seattle, the juxtaposition of the water and the mountains and the green everywhere just is such a great atmosphere! we loved our trip out to the olympic peninsula to go to forks and hope to be able to go back again to enjoy the park next time!

21 February, 2009

signs of la push. it was about a 15 minute drive from forks to la push, you would have thought it wouldn't have been so far, but it was... i loved the pepsi sign, it was in front of a campground about halfway between forks and la push.

it was pretty dark as we were driving between the two towns, and we saw signs for third beach, second beach, where was "the" first beach? we kept driving all the way to the end of the road as far as we could go. there were houses, dogs on the road, lots of people taking walks along the road. we passed the tribal community center and parked at the oceanside resort and walked out on to the beach.

this is my favorite sign in town, it was right in front of the visitor's center. you could buy the little sign in the dazzled by twilight shop, but where was i going to put one once i got home? there were three motels in town, all three had twilight-isms on their signs. one said, "edward cullen has NOT slept here", and the two others said things like "welcome twilighters" and they also had a special twilight suite (which i believe i have seen photos of on www.bellaandedward.com and it was a little scary with all of the red and black!).

this was the main twilight store

i was afraid that it was going to be closing early, since usually in small towns the shops are not open that late. this place was packed, and there was no sign in the window saying what time it closed. they were smart to open this shop. it had t-shirts, collectibles, stickers, cd's, everything, pretty much. there was a florist shop in town as well that had some really cute things and they seemed to have really friendly and knowledgeable staff.

the first photo is of the visitor's center. it was closed, but they had a cute valentine's day card in the window that said it was from edward... bella's truck is also at the visitor's center, which also doubles as a logging museum. i forgot to look to see if the gascap was still missing... the third photo is of downtown forks. we walked along and went into the stores and one store we went into they asked if we were twilighters. we were wondering if it was that obvious, but being a small town, i am sure that they know everyone. we asked if they were happy about the affiliation with twilight, therefore having tourists and people from all over walking the streets of forks. she said that most of the people were happy about it, some liked the privacy that forks offered before twilight, but that people were proud of the affiliation and enjoyed the visitors, as all of the tourists were ecstatic.

forks....finally!! as we were coming through all of the rain and sleet, i was worried that we were going to have to run from place to place and not be able to take in the town. we came from the park and as there was more and more commerce and housing, the sun came out just in time as we were approaching forks. it truly is a 2-stoplight town. there was one main street, with a couple of streets on each side, and we followed it as far as the visitor's center (which was closed) and the grocery store and forks outfitters. we didn't get to forks until 4:30pm and i was afraid that all of the shops would be closed and that our time for photos were dwindling.

this is the olympic national park, more specifically, the crescent lake area of the park. even though we went through this area with the sole purpose of getting to forks, we would definitely like to go back just to go through some of the park. these photos do not even give the park justice, at all- it was breathtaking! a lot of the areas were closed because it is winter, but i am sure that in the summer the lake is probably teeming with people enjoying all it has to offer. the road from port angeles to forks is 55 miles, and it went from sunny, to raining, to misty, to sleeting, to pouring rain, to sunny in forks. sunny in forks........

we went to downtown port angeles after doing the wineries there. bella italia, the restaurant where bella and edward have their first date after she gets almost-attacked in port angeles, was closed for lunch or we definitely would have gone there! when we came up on it i actually had some tears in my eyes, but i think all of that wine tasting was affecting me! :) we went into port news, which was the bookstore that she went in while her friends were dress shopping. i thought that they would have more twilight stuff, but they just had a small display in the window. port angeles, to me, felt the way that it felt in the book, industrial and depressed. it is located right on the strait de juan de fuca, between the ocean and the puget sound and across the waterway from victoria, canada. there was the small downtown area, and then the surrounding areas that have strip malls, etc...

18 February, 2009

we headed from sequim to port angeles. in port angeles there were three wineries that we went to: olympic cellars, black diamond, and cameraderie. we bought a bottle from cameraderie, they had a great atmosphere and you could picture spending the day there. we would have, but we had to get moving on to the city of port angeles and then on to our goal: forks!

17 February, 2009

wine tastings on the olympic peninsula... they were having a valentine's day special that we could not pass up on our way to forks! we were planning to go tasting the next day, but we called one of the wineries to see if it was open (since most had sketchy hours in the winter) and they were open and having the valentine's special. for $25 you got an olympic peninsula wine glass and tastings at seven wineries, and each were paired with chocolate...whether it be chocolate truffles or mole chili. it was fantastic and we had a great time! it made it so that our day was very long and we did not get to forks until 4:30pm, but it was worth it! these photos are of the lost mountain winery in sequim, washington.