The festival is held in and around North Bend, Washington, about 30 minutes east of Seattle (depending on traffic, but more on that later!) The picturesque beauty and small-town charm of the area made it an ideal region for filming the show -- as seen in the pilot episode and exterior/establishing shots used in the duration of the series -- and much of its follow-up film, "Fire Walk With Me." As I prepared for my fourth journey to this one-of-a-kind destination, I knew that I was due for another great experience along with the other 200-plus attendees, many of whom are repeat guests like myself.
My trip, on the other hand, didn't get off to the greatest start. Frontier Airlines has become increasingly awful in the last year, thanks to the nickel-and-diming of their fees for just about everything. The icing on the cake (well, flight) was that my departure to Seattle on Tuesday the 21st was delayed by over an hour with zero explanation. I've been on the fence about Frontier for a while, but I'm seriously considering never flying with them again.
After picking up my rental car on Wednesday afternoon, I ventured from my airport hotel into the city. I had made plans to meet up with Aaron, a friend from Denver who moved to Seattle last year. In the delightful and happening Ballard neighborhood, we hit three different but equally awesome places (Root Table, Matador, and King's Hardware) for beverages and various small-plate cuisine. We talked for hours about life, love, work... and, of course, why Twin Peaks is such a big deal after all this time.
On Thursday, I spent the afternoon at the EMP (Experience Music Project) Museum, an incredible mecca for music and pop-culture fanatics. In addition to their permanent and touring exhibits, the museum has an outstanding interactive music lab, where you can experiment with vocals, instruments, and mixing on studio-quality equipment. Upon leaving the museum at 3:30, I thought I had plenty of time to get out of the city before rush hour hit. WOW, was I wrong! Instead, I had my worst encounter to date with the dreaded beast known as Seattle traffic.
I've run into minor snags here and there during previous visits, but this was something else. I should have reached North Bend in 45 minutes tops, but I arrived two hours later. Nearly an hour of that was just getting from the museum to the highway, which are only about a mile apart. People think it's the rain that makes Seattle unbearable, but it's always been beautiful during my visits, so maybe the city should be more honest about its other shortcomings. I finally checked in at the North Bend Motel that evening and met up with fellow fans before going to a pre-festival mixer at the Fall City Roadhouse (one of the filming sites). All of us were able to get a head-start on catching up with old friends and making new ones.
Friday morning officially kicked off the festival with check-in, merchandise tables, and a trivia contest that gets more difficult with each round. Making it to the top three finalists is no easy feat, which I've learned the hard way. Year one, I was too intimidated to even try. Year two, I made it through the first round and was eliminated in the second. Last year, I made it through the second round and went out in the third, and that held true this year too. At least I did the same and not any worse!
When trivia was over, we ventured back to the motel and had lunch at Rocko's, a local legend of a diner right across the street that we've been meaning to try. After a few hours of relaxing downtime, we got ourselves all dressed up and headed to the clubhouse at the Snoqualmie Ridge Golf Course for the festival's signature event: the celebrity banquet. Over the years, various combinations of the cast and crew have made appearances to meet the fans and autograph show memorabilia. This year, Phoebe Augustine, Catherine Coulson, Kimmy Robertson, and Charlotte Stewart -- who have each attended during at least one of my previous visits -- were joined by Gary Hershberger, Jonny Leppell, and Ian Buchanan. To avoid long waits in line, I skipped the ladies (to whom I was able to say hello at other points during the weekend) in order to meet those gentlemen for the first time.
During the Q&A session, the big questions on everyone's minds were about the upcoming season: who's returning, what's happening, etc. Creator David Lynch made the actors sign non-disclosure agreements, but an audience member used his question to joke that as an attorney, he could find a way around the NDAs. Lynch himself was unable to attend, but he wrote a statement that was read on his behalf, asking for fans to be patient with the process and to respect the mystery. Since we live in a digital age that is far removed from the show's original run 25 years ago, his chief concern is preserving the sense of wonder and surprise that can be ruined by tidbits and spoilers when watching a show doesn't happen simultaneously.
The great thing about being so close to a major city is that there's always something to do, especially when there's a longer break in the schedule. For a group of us with several festivals under our belts, we skipped the Saturday bus tours of the filming locations and ventured back into Seattle for a Mariners baseball game. (Go figure that this time, traffic wasn't an issue in either direction!) Safeco Field offers a beautiful view of the skyline, and the weather was perfect for a day at the ballpark. The Mariners were playing the Toronto Blue Jays, and I was shocked not only by how many Canadians made the trek to see the game in person, but also by how surly they were as fans. I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice, but these people were pretty vocal and they booed at everything. We had a running joke during the game about taking over Canada because the country was probably empty.
On the way back to North Bend, thoughts of world domination turned to thoughts about dinner, and we stopped in Issaquah (two towns over) to dine at Aji, our favorite sushi restaurant in the area. That night, the festival rented out the local movie theater to show the winning entries from the short-film contest as well as rare clips and archival footage related to "Peaks" phenomena and its actors. The main feature was "Fire Walk With Me," but since it was already shown at three of the last four years' movie nights, several of us decided to stimulate the local economy with a trip around the corner to The Pour House.
Sunday started off cloudy and rainy, but it cleared up enough for the festival to hold its annual picnic in Olallie State Park. In addition to lunch, there's a short walking tour of other nearby filming locations as well as a Tibetan rock-throwing contest and a cherry stem-tying contest -- both of which are inspired by famous scenes from the show. We also found out the winners of the caption contest, where four random stills from the series are displayed over the weekend for comments to be entered. While I have yet to win despite submitting an entry for each photo every year, this was the first time that I received an honorable mention. Trivia be damned; I'm moving up in the world!
A few hours later -- after the first wave of goodbyes with people who had to leave early -- we reconvened in downtown North Bend for dinner and drinks at Boxley's, a classy little jazz club with a great menu. Our favorite server from previous years was even there to happily wait on us once again! When the rain and cooler temperatures cancelled our planned outdoor karaoke night, we decided to throw our own party at the motel. Room 17 became the local hotspot, full of music, dancing, and a whole slew of inside references and running jokes that went until the wee small hours of the morning.
Even though I've attended four consecutive festivals, there are still opportunities to do or see things for the first time. In my case, it was Monday's group outing to the Kiana Lodge. The lodge was a pivotal filming site for an iconic scene (the discovery of Laura Palmer's body that opens the series), but it's much farther away from our event "headquarters" and it hasn't always been part of the formal itinerary. This year, the organizers opted to rent out the space for a few hours so we could walk around and take thousands of pictures (quite literally if you added them up across all of the attendees). As morbid as it sounds, we also had a unique chance to be wrapped in plastic on the beach and posed like Laura. It's true: only nerds could be this insensitive and get away with it!
When the Kiana excursion was over, the official functions had concluded. The last day of the festival is always a bittersweet occasion; even the addition of this extra day couldn't delay the inevitable. Thankfully, many of us were still in the area for another day or so, and we kept the spirit alive by stopping for a group dinner in Bremerton on the way back to North Bend. More farewells were exchanged, but the brave, final few that were still in town went back to the motel for one last hurrah. It was a decidedly smaller-scale event than the previous night, but we were all too full of energy and emotion to do anything productive like pack or sleep. Instead, we laughed and hugged the night away, doing our best to prepare for the morning's parting of the ways.
As inadvertently long as this post ended up becoming, it's actually only the tip of the festival iceberg. There are so many unforgettable moments from this year and my previous years that could easily fill countless pages out in cyberspace. One day, I may just have to write a book about all of this. 2016 will make it a nice, round five years that I've attended, so that may be a more auspicious occasion. Until then, these very general reminders of such a fantastic weekend will have to tide me over. At the very least, it'll help keep these memories -- and the show -- alive for fans both present and future.
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