Thirty in Seattle

Forks, WA: where nothing actually happened…ever February 19, 2009

By far, the post on my “old blog” that continues to receive the most attention is this one, written in the wake of the Twilight panel I attended at Comic-Con last year. Lucky for my girlfriends and me, Seattle sits in close proximity to the small logging town of Forks, WA: the setting for the entire Twilight saga. So, being grown women with full-time jobs and busy social calendars, what did we do? We scheduled a trip to Forks, of course! And as if that wasn’t enough, we also decided that the “Twilight Tour” being offered by the local Chamber of Commerce was well worth our $20. Of course, hindsight being what it is, I could sure use that $20 right about now…

After arriving late at night (and surviving our own near-“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” moment), we spent the night at the Forks Motel. Our real adventure began the next morning when we coalesced along with a dozen other grown women (and one reluctant boyfriend) at the Forks Chamber of Commerce at 9 am, and were greeted by our host and tour guide, the very dapper Mike:

Mike, formerly a park ranger with the US Forest Service, came out of retirement to become Forks’ foremost expert on everything Twilight. He started off by giving us an introduction, explaining in painstaking detail who Stephenie Meyers was, how she came up with the idea for the books, and a not-too-brief chronology of the book’s rising popularity—including visual aids of the actors chosen to play the coveted roles of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.  Apparently, he forgot that he was talking to a group of women so obsessed with all things Twilight that we had come all the way to FORKS, WA to go on a tour! In January!

Eventually, we all piled into the van which we later discovered had mold growing in it (yes! white, fuzzy mold) and set out to discover the various locations featured in Meyer’s epic books. Our first stop, the Swan House…

I should probably take this opportunity to mention that NONE of the movie was filmed in Forks: not one…single…frame. So how did Stephenie Meyers choose the setting for her books? Did she conduct painstaking research, looking high and low for the perfect setting to drop her characters into? Nope: she Googled “rainiest place in the US”. She’d never even set foot in the sleepy abandoned lumber town until after the success of the first book had kicked in. Had she made the trek out there, she likely would have chosen another rainy town for her vampire leads to thrive in. ANY other rainy town.

But Mike (and the rest of the Forks residents) decided that, had the movie actually been filmed locally, this would likely have been the house chosen to provide the façade for Bella Swan and her Police-Chief dad. Look how “official” the sign makes it…

Next stop on the tour was the hospital where the patriarch of the Cullen family, Dr. Carlisle Cullen, worked. Why the people of Forks didn’t see anything amiss with a world-class doctor taking up his practice in a hospital made up of mobile trailers (with their MRI machine out in the parking lot) is beyond me. But at least he gets his own parking spot.

Had the movie indeed been filmed in Forks, and had Stephenie Meyers really been aiming to keep the setting for her books as true to life as possible, this would be the Police Station where Chief Swan would have worked and this would have been his cruiser:

Except that it wasn’t, and she didn’t…so they aren’t.

This also isn’t the Cullen house:

In fact, the only reason this house was chosen to stand in for the Cullen house on the tour was that it is the oldest house in Forks…and apparently the novel makes mention of the Cullen’s living in a 100 year old home just outside of town. Unfortunately for this Cullen house, it doubles as a B&B…and is right next door to the police station. But that doesn’t stop the owners from playing along. For all the Twilight fans out there that might actually be hoping to catch a glimpse of the real Cullen family, they’ve posted a sign:

Next stop: Forks High School.

Probably the most authentic stop on the tour, the movie tried to stay true to the real Forks High School by making an exact replica of the sign to feature outside the fictional high school in the film. Finally! Something I recognize…sort of.

As we made our way towards the final destination on the tour—the La Push Indian Reservation and First Beach—Mike entertained us by reading Twilight Trivia, which he’d come up with himself. This was, by far, the most HILARIOUS part of the trip. It had been pouring rain all day, and we were all miserable and cold…but warming up our brains with trivia questions like “What kind of trees did Edward and Bella sit under on page 453 of Eclipse?” really helped boost our spirits.

Finally, we arrived at First Beach—location of the infamous “Bonfire Scene” in which Jacob tells Bella about the vampire legends of his tribe. Do we look cold? Cause we WERE.

 Here are the cliffs that Bella would have dived from in New Moon:

 Notice how the angle of the drop makes it impossible for her to ever have hit the water? She would have been a bloody, pulpy mess before a drop ever hit her…but who’s paying attention to little details like that at this point?

At the end of the day, we were soaked to the bone, freezing, and fogging over the windows in the mold-infested van on our way back to the Chamber of Commerce. It was a GREAT day. Worth the 5 hour drive from the city? Absolutely! Worth our $20? Maybe. Would I recommend that people make their way from various other countries just to experience Forks? NO!

Because you see, as the title of this post suggests: when it comes to Twilight, Forks is the place where nothing actually happened…EVER.