Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

Can you believe it? This is Junior Ranger Caroline with Alice Cullen, who is played by Ashley Greene from the hit movie Twilight. We are up here in Forks, Washington, for Twilight Fanfest 2011 and ran into Ashley, who had shapeshifted into a two-legged horse.

And, of course, this is Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, who was in character trying to avoid the crowds by being inconspicuous. Damn, we sure loved these movies and wish they’d return. There’s not a day that goes by we don’t dream about Midnight Sun coming out someday.

Is this the path to Transylvania, or am I remembering the wrong vampire film?

Whoever’s playing the joke with the sign pointing us to this moss-covered credenza had me fooled, thinking I was about to find a “Moss Covered Three-Handled Gradunza.” Silly me for confusing things.

You probably haven’t figured it out yet, but we are in the Hoh Rain Forest, which is part of the Olympic National Park and the beginning of the serious part of this blog post that I have very little to say about.

Shoot, I don’t know what I can seriously say about this close-up shot of spore plants and other things I know little of.

Is it enough to share that I like wood tones surrounded by various hues of green?

Then there are these trees straddling a dead tree in a kind of necromantic multi-year ritual that we witnessed on our first visit to this coastal forest.

Come on, Caroline, I needed a scowl as whoever heard of a story featuring a friendly smiling tree troll?

Here we are, standing in front of the only moss-covered pay-phone in the entirety of the United States, which probably no longer exists. Did we miss our golden opportunity to call people using quarters to access a landline? Hmm, a smartphone that uses quarters, now there’s a great idea. I know what you are thinking, a smartphone doesn’t have space to store many quarters? I got that figured out, too: a Kevlar pouch attached to the phone to accept the coins, which would also stop people from breaking into said phone.

There was no way on a day with bright blue skies and our proximity to the coast that we wouldn’t allocate at least some small amount of time to visit. We’ll skip the Quinault Rain Forest, which is also part of the Olympic National Park, as we do have a flight later tonight that will bring us back to Phoenix.

There was a large root ball nearby with possibly 100s of cairns stacked upon its old sun-dried roots, but my photographs didn’t offer even one that was worth sharing. That’s a good thing, though, as there always needs to be another mystery for others to find, or what hope of finding your own magic is there?

Caroline is searching for that mystery.

This is the reason Washington beaches are not known for sunbathing; how would anyone get comfortable laying on logs?

Sometimes, when searching for something to say about a photo, I learn far more than I could have imagined. My first question here was, “How long do barnacles live?” The answer is 5 to 10 years. Well then, how long might these barnacles have been attached to this mussel so I can figure out how old the barnacles are? The answer didn’t really give me the answer I wanted, as it turns out that mussels can live to be 60 to 70 years old. That means a typical mussel can host 6 to 14 generations of barnacles on its shell. Now I have to reevaluate if I’m willing to eat a bivalve that could be older than me.

Why is exploring nature better than visiting Versailles in Paris, France? At the Palace of Versailles, you are only allowed to look at what’s decreed by others who restrict your access, while in nature, you can look in the cracks, corners, and under the rocks of what nobody may have ever looked at before.

Writing the above, I realized that at this moment in Caroline’s life, I was the only person to see her. So, in a sense, she embodies all the treasure found in Versailles and all the potential found in nature, and lucky me has the opportunity to continue my exploration of her potential; love is that grand. By the way, we have stopped at the Kalaloch Lodge for some lunch; Caroline’s beer is from Fish Tale Ale, and the glass reads, “Reel Fish Swim Naked.”

From our lunchtime overview, we had about 4 hours without stops to reach the Sea-Tac airport. Obviously, we did make stops, but for the sake of this blog journey into the Pacific Northwest, this is the end of the road.