The Twilight Tour

On our second day in the glittery vampire town, we had an appointment at 11am to begin our tour. We decided to go out for breakfast first, so we stopped by a place called Restaurant. I'm sure before Twilight showed up this was the town's little watering hole. They hadn't even bothered to name it. There was also a giant moose head hovering above, watching over us as we ate.

After very cheap, very fattening breakfasts we headed over toward the tour office. We had a little time so we decided to explore. This is where we found the mother of all Twilight stores. It was the same franchise as the store in Port Angeles, but it was worlds apart. This one took out all the stops. Upon entering, I felt like I had just walked into a Rainforest Cafe, but instead of mediocre meals for sale, there were hundreds of T-shirts, dolls, buttons, and underwear containing the faces of the world's most famous vampires.

There was even a darkened corner separated by curtains for the "mature" items. I was beyond terrified of what I was going to find in there. What kind of mature Twilight items could there be? Is that even legal? It turned out not to be as bad as I thought. I had imagined a holy photo-shopping nightmare, but it mostly contained underwear that said "VILF" or "WILF" on it. I saw one shirt that referenced lesbians loving Twilight and that was it, not sure why that was in the mature section. I'm pretty sure lesbian relationships make more sense than a vampire and a human, but Twilight fans have never been the ones to rely on for rationality.

After our shopping excursion, our tour began. There were two mother/son combos, and a group of girls in their twenties, just like us. All together there were eleven of us. Our guide sounded like he was from Russia. Little did he know that when he migrated to this country his American dream was going to be Twilight tours in Forks. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. We all loaded into a black Twilight minibus.

Our driver was in his sixties or seventies, with a beer belly and suspenders. I would have assumed he'd never even heard of Twilight if hadn't been driving the tour bus.

We saw all the important places:

The Cullen house, including the graduation cap wall decoration.

The Swan house

Dr. Cullen's parking spot:

and Jacob's rental cabin? Apparently he moved out and wanted the extra cash rentals provide...

After stopping briefly on the treaty line to get some Billy Black shakes, we headed into La Push and visited Rialto Beach. Apparently a favorite of the wolf pack. Also, it was the only beach our tour was allowed on because apparently the locals weren't as thrilled about Twilight tour buses coming through and destroying nature as we had hoped. It was prefect weather for vampire spottin'!

Other than one of the Twilight mom's and I becoming a little competitive over the trivia questions, the tour went beautifully. We laughed, we cringed, and we sang along to our favorite Twilight soundtracks. We got back to Forks around 2:30. We decided to go back out to La Push one last time to see the beaches we had missed.