Florida, Orlando day 24 and 25

Sorry for the non-existing updates, here comes a long one to make up for it. 

On our way to Orlando we stopped at Daytona beach on the east coast. We visited an old lighthouse that we climbed up and got to see a great view of Daytona. Josh is scared of heights and climbing down the lighthouse was a big challenge. Luckily he reached the ground without any major panic attacks. We then headed to the beach to have a couple if hours of chilling before driving to Orlando. This beach was really cool. There was a walkway from the parking lot that led to the beach and on this walkway we got to see a bunch of turtles, one of which were on the actual walkway and panicked a bit when it saw us coming. We could tell he/she contemplated jumping of of the walkway (maybe a meter high) but luckily he/she just tried to hide in his/her shell, hoping we didn't see him/her. Unfortunately, we left our cameras and phones in the van and therefore we don't have any pictures of them. We went to get the camera an hour later but we couldn't see any turtles then. It started raining heavily twice when we were on the beach. Luckily it didn't last too long. The beach was quite big and long and you can even drive on it (!). Pretty cool.

In Orlando we went to Disney world and universal studios over three days. We managed to get really cheap tickets to Universal studios from our hotel, the only thing we had to do first was to go to a sales presentation at a resort called Mystic Dunes. They basically sell timeshare where you, instead of putting your money in a savings account in a bank, put money towards a travel fund and you can go stay anywhere in the world where they have resorts for "free". Basically, you have to put at least 30,000 dollars in the fund within a couple of years in order to stay at the resorts for up to three weeks per year (they then get a huge interest from your money). Even though we were honest from the get go that we were only there for the Universal tickets, our sales guy spoke to us for two hours and tried to convince us to "invest in our future travels". We had read reviews online before we went and found people who warned about this place being a scam and that the sales people had been really unpleasant with them when they didn't want to invest. Our sales guy started off being over the top nice and when Josh confronted him on some things he started to become a bit impatient. After about two hours of sitting through a bull**** presentation and sales pitch the guy went to get the manager who then tried to push us further. Luckily we were prepared and stood our ground saying we did not want to sign off on anything. Eventually they gave up and let us go and get our tickets. In the pictures you can see a happy Josh with the tickets outside of the resort.

Georgia, Okefenokee swamp, day 23

After leaving Laura S. Walker state park in the morning we just crossed the street to another park called the Okefenokee swamp park. It is a swamp with guided boat tours where you get to see wild alligators and other animals (a no-go for someone who dislikes insects by the way). We instantly liked this place and alligators were free to go around the tourist space, although they mostly stayed in the water surrounding the buildings. The boat tour was awesome with a really funny southerner as a guide, talking us through the different things that we could see. Before heading off in the boat he asked where we were from, and since I was from Sweden (furthest away from the states) I would be the first one to be fed to the alligators. Luckily he didn't keep his word ;) I have a short film where you can hear his accent that I will post later. There was also an alligator and snake show where a very knowledgable woman told us about the species and let us touch them. We even got to have a 4 year old alligator (they grow really slow and can live up to a 100 years) on our heads!

Here are some pictures I took with my phone but there will be more later when I upload my camera pictures to the computer.

Georgia, day 22

On Saturday morning we got up early in order to make sure we had somewhere to stay for the next night. We had already decided to go to a place we found when looking for things to see in Georgia. It was called Wormsloe plantation and the pictures online looked incredible. When we arrived we were even more stunned over how amazing the place looked, like straight out of a Tim Burton movie. It felt like Johnny Depp was gonna jump out from behind a tree at any given second. The plantation was quite big and existed of ruins and beautiful nature. The land was claimed by a Brit, Noble Jones, who came over to America in the 1700. We or to see his house that was now in ruins and all the surrounding areas that played a role in the life of the people who lived and worked at Wormsloe. It is a place that has been kept in the Jones family for centuries. 

After the plantation we went to a state park called Laura S. Walker where we got a camping spot for the night.