1274 Tourile

While I was volunteering as a staff member at the State Visitor Center, I got a chance to meet some tourists. It was interesting to note what they were there to see.
All ten people I talked to were there to see the Capitol Dome, of course; two couples from Virginia, one couple from Germany, one couple from Brawley, California, and a couple of guys from England.
The English guys were funny. I at first complemented them on their Australian accent. They took great exception to that, and proclaimed they were from the U.K. and spoke the Queen’s English.
They were too modest. I’ve heard Elizabeth speak and they were a lot more understandable.
They too were there to see the Capitol, but they had also been out to Washington’s other current tourist destination.
Forks.
Yep, they were drawn in by the “Twilight” phenomenon and had just made the trip all the way around the peninsula so they could stop in at the vampire stomping grounds of Forks.
According to them, they encountered no actual bloodsuckers. Unless by bloodsuckers you mean money-grubbers.
“What is it with this Forks,” they asked, in that upper-crusty British manner. “Not much there, eh?”
“Well,” I admitted, “before the Twilight thing, us natives used to call it the armpit of Washington.”
“Oh and that’s being nice,” they said.
One of the guys had gone there specifically at the request of his thirteen-year-old son back in England. I heard him on the phone with him later.
“Yes, we skipped Mt. St. Helens so we could go there. No, a bit of a let down. Hand-scrawled signs on old trucks and such, purporting to be vampire locations. No, no actual bloodsuckers... just a couple of suckers from England what...
Nevermind son...”
America, ya gotta love it.