My Twilight Pilgrimage

I’m going to now vicariously take you through the Most Fun, Most Grown-up, Giddy-Girl-High Weekend I’ve ever experienced. However, as I’ve never been on a Grown-Up (though we don’t act it) Ladies weekend retreat in my life, (Another Fawndear 1st) I have nothing to compare it with. But as you can see from my photo ops, my perma-grin of happiness from experiencing several Fawndear firsts is plastered onto my face and will probably be there for a while.

DaringYoungMom and Eve started the whole idea rolling a while back and invited a huge circle of friends to come partake of our inner-child, school-girl, and obsession-fest with the Twilight Book Series by Stephenie Meyers. Nine of us were brave enough to make the once in a lifetime trek to the Olympic Peninsula to visit the settings described in her series. And we did it on the very weekend that the Fourth Book in the series ‘Breaking Dawn’ was released.

So here’s my trip in a long photo adventure nutshell – many of the pictures are taken with my B.A.B friend also named Fawndear who stood in as my replacement.

Wait three hours to ride a 20 something-ish minute ferry ride across the Puget Sound. Not too much fun...

However, It wasn’t too bad because my van buddies...

Pazazz, Ethel & Lucy, and Angela (poor-human-lady-who-has-never-even-heard-of-the-Twilight-Series-but-wanted-to-take-a-girl-break), and me had too much fun telling everyone on the ferry what we were off to do, eliciting strange and 'your mental' stares from many fellow passengers.

On our way to our evening gathering location in Port Angeles we made a little detour so Fawndear could drive through a local game preserve and meet some of her not-yet-vampire-food relatives.


Oh so cute!

Then it was off to the cushy Best Western.

...where we gladly paid and arm and a leg not to sleep in the beds for more than a couple of hours. We were there long enough to unload and then we needed to make it to our dinner reservations at Bella and Edwards’s first-date-but-not-really restaurant the Bella Italia in Port Angeles.

Where we're joined by DaringYoungMom, Eve and her 2 1/2 week old baby sweet Miss Annie, my roomies for the night. We figured sure bring a newborn along because we weren't planning on sleeping anyway. She was a doll and people were lining up just to snuggle her.

And get this (as I scream with excitement) we got the happy couples (Bella & Edwards) booth around the corner and next to a line of other booths. DYM ordered Bella's dinner of Mushroom Ravioli ...

Heavenly taste - However the price-tag was a once in a lifetime but worth it ticket

DYM graciously let me have one of her raviolis’. I'm not a mushroom gal - But Yummy!

I would have got the whole dinner but it had prawns in it and I didn’t feel llike tempting my seafood allergy so I ordered the Chicken Storm..a..bocca or something similar sounding that was divine. Well, we daintily ate, gabbed, giggled, conversed with our cute (Edward crushing) waitress for a couple of hours before we headed off to the… very same bookstore ...

(that Bella did not go in, on her scary evening in Port Angeles) for the midnight release of the Breaking Dawn book...

Talk about a party!

with hoards of real life, honest to goodness teenagers. It’s o.k. we fit right in.

I think they had handed out all the books by 12:05 a.m. I got mine around 12: 04: 30 sec.

We were soon back to the lobby of our nightly lodging establishment.

Where we quickly found out who were the sleepers and who were the Twi-hards who could stay-up-all-night reading. I made it till 6 a.m. then zonked for 1 ½ hours.


And our reaction to page 360…


Silent Screaming because we didn’t want to get kicked out of the establishment and DYM collapsing from the sheer brilliance of Ms. Stephenie's Writing…

And… yes my first adult experience with bed-jumping.

And no, I didn’t break anything.

Let me tell you eating and taking showers are inconveniences when you’re so sucked into reading a book. But we did them anyway and were off by noonish Saturday to continue our journey on to Forks, WA.

The primary setting of the novels and location for the most Fawndear cheesy grins and girly squeals you can get in any one town.

Poor Angela had me sitting behind her in the van, screaming and giggling hysterically (probably from lack of sleep) whenever I would see different locations mentioned in the book. All my vehicle occupants agreed that I should continue seeing my Young and Gorgeous Counselor on a regular basis.

So Forks, WA was very Giddy-Tourist-Camera-Wielding hospitable town. I was regretting that they didn’t have more Twilight souvenirs but its o.k. because the pictures are priceless.

Here we are visiting the fictional character’s very real sites. Like...

Bella’s truck in front of the Chamber of Commerce Building with an oh-so-adorable city greeter who would pick up and read her own copy of Breaking Dawn in-between the hoards of romance fans who entered the premises.

Then we visited Sully’s burger for a Bella burger with pineapple and plastic vampire fangs, the Thriftway grocery store for some of Charlie’s (explode the microwave) favorite spaghetti sauce…

The Swan Residence… The funny thing was they had a motercycle parked in the driveway. I think Charlie must have been on vacation or something.

And look whose parking spot we found at the Forks Community Hospital (more girly screams). The Dreamy Dr. Cullen.

However, the Mercedes wasn’t there so he must have been off hunting, I mean hiking. Drat!

Back to Forks High School and a few other drive-by photo spots before it was off to our favorite Werewolf haunt down at…

and my favorite destination of the Day - First Beach.

Could this be Bella and Jacob’s favorite seat?

Or was it this?

Love is in the air - Look how sweet. We found this cute couple on the beach reading the novel of Breaking Dawn together.... Oh How Romantic! (Prince Erik take notes)


Stunning Location! I had to shamelessly collect a few pieces of red-brown driftwood and rocks that looked like perfect moons to bring home. Look Kids what mom brought home for you from my trip - ROCKS!

Then all too soon it was over, and we were headed back home to finish reading the book and join the land of reality.


Total time it took to read all 700 plus pages of Breaking Dawn – 25 hours. But consider that we visited all those locations as well, not to bad.

Now I just need to get some sleep and plan my return trip. I can’t wait to come back!