One of my high school friends had to return to her parents home suddenly for a week so three of us planned a super spontaneous two day road trip down to the Olympic Peninsula. We had been talking about doing this ever since we collectively binge re-watched all five Twilight films last fall but didn’t know when we’d all be back home at the same time.
We dusted off our camping gear that we probably hadn’t used since our ninth grade camping trip, got ourselves a backcountry camping permit, mapped out our route, and piled into Emma’s old Prius.
I also brought my Kodak Trimlite Instamatic 18 along because I finally stopped at a local camera store for some 110 film and flip flash but I had to ship it out to get developed so I won’t have those photos for several more weeks. I’m super excited to see how those turned out since I’ve never used that camera or film type and brand (Lomography) before but I’ll just have to keep waiting patiently.

We made a few stops on the way to our campsite, our first major stop being for lunch at Port Angeles, where they have an oceanfront boardwalk (and is featured in many of the Twilight novels).

And of course we had to stop at the Olympic National Park Visitor Centre to pick up a park pass and a bear canister – and Zoe and I were coerced into becoming Junior Rangers. The ranger who gave us the booklets wrote Zoe’s name on her booklet in Chinese calligraphy which we all quite impressed by.

And we stopped at a lookout spot of Crescent Lake, which we decided to swim in the next day.

Naturally we also had to stop in Forks, and not just because it was on the way to our campsite.

Once we did a bit of touring around the area, we drove over to La Push (it’s La Push, baby!), then grabbed our packs to hike 15 minutes to Second Beach where we swam, had our dinner, and set up our tent for the night.

After a morning spent looking through tide pools, having some breakfast at a little drive through cafe in Forks, and a stop in the Twilight museum and an afternoon of hiking and swimming, it was time to return home. I could’ve stayed over there forever – it was so peaceful and pretty.