Soooo sorry for not posting this one earlier, but here it is!
Our goals in Atlanta werent that much, only to be in a place, a big place, to celebrate the 4th of July. It sure is a huge city, but we didnt see much of it. We came in on Saturday night and just chilled and Sunday we relaxed again before heading to Stone Mountain Park to celebrate the 4th of July! We were all really tired cause of the long roadtrip and were actually looking forward to it to end, even though we knew it was going to be sad.
We took a taxi towards the park and everything was fine, but then there were waaayyy to many cars wanting to enter the park. So we got out of the taxi cause we didnt want to spend money on just waiting, and thought we could get in by foot, but then we were stopped by a guard telling us that we simply cant enter without a car. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?
Luckily there was a pickup waiting in line right next to us and the two gentlemen driving it were nice enough to let us tailgate so we could get inside! Haha! We got a lot of weird looks...
When we got to the park we found a restaurant at a hotel almost straight away and there was a buffet with so much good stuff (God, do we like buffets!), and so we dug in. After a nice dinner and very nice dessert(s) we went downstairs to the bar and started our journey to space once again and then headed out to the hotel garden as a laser-show and the fireworks were about to begin.
First of, the laser-show was amazing!!! On the mountain wall, there were carvings of three persons riding horses, some historical thing, and the lasers made animated pictures and a show of the history of the three riders. It was veery cool, ive never seen a lasershow like that.
Over to the fireworks; Ive Never seen anything like it. We don't have that kind of firework in Norway, no way! If im not mistaken i remember a UFO and a smiley too? It was so amazing and cool. (there will be pics of the same kinda fireworks later...)
We left Atlanta with more patriotism in our minds and headed for Jacksonville. All we new
about Jax was that we would finally see the ocean again and the
white sand embracing the coast of Florida. When we got there, it was Exactly like that…!
We came into town in the evening. The sun had just set and had painted beautiful colors in the horisont and we parked our cars and Ran down to the beach. It was magical! We had waited So_Long for this and when we finally felt the sand between our toes and the water splashing on our legs, Nothing needed to be said. Just; Finally.
We stayed in Jacksonvile for 4 days i think. We stayed just outside of downtown and had to drive every day to Jax Beach(es). We basically hung out on the beach every day and then went downtown in the evening or just hung out in the motel. One night we ate at a fine restaurant downtown. This was in the dining district The Jacksonville Landing. A great area down by the water with beautiful view to the famous bridge in blue.
On the beach on day we rented surfboards!!
This was a highly anticipated activity that we had talked about for a loong time and that we had agreed on doing in Miami, but then we couldn't wait, so we did it in Jax. The condition for surfing was beyond perfect, big waves (not huge); perfect to get a great surf-experience. Runa was the only one who had surfed before (in Australia) but Lars managed to stand up on the board the first time he tried too! (I think someone else made it too, but i dont remember who, sorry!)
Me not so much, but i did get up after a long struggle with the waves!
So surfing was GREAT, its definitely a sport that both me and Lars agreed on that we would like to be doing as a hobby!
So now we were finally back by the ocean in the final state; it really felt incredible after everything we had been through, driving trough _18_ states! Our next stop was going to be…. Disneyworld?
- vic -
