scuba diving

Florida Keys (part 3- All the other Fun)

/ Chris and Angie / Leave a comment

I guess it’s rather appropriate that a trip to an island cluster would be filled with so many water activities, especially since my uncle lives on a boat! My muscle man and I spent the whole week just soaking it up and enjoying everything we could!

 

While we were planning our trip, I was kinda disappointed that I just couldn’t make our schedule work to go on a kayak trip around the everglades. But we got the next best thing, rental kayaks and a perfectly placed boat launch (an unexpected perk of staying on a boat in a marina haha!) So off we went armed with plenty of sunscreen and snacks for a great little paddle around the gulf side of the island. It was so peaceful, just me and my muscle man, paddling around wherever our arms could take us. There were lots of great little coral islands covered in mangroves, and we pulled into this little grassy lagoon that was home to loads of upside down jellyfish! We also saw a pufferfish chilling out around one of the islands, and of course there were so many neat birds to look at above land as well.

 

Naturally, the scuba diving in the keys is great, and the area is very well known for its shallow coral reefs, but leave it to my muscle man to want more! He has been hounding me to dive a wreck pretty much since he got certified, but as they are usually reserved for more advanced divers since they are usually deep and tend to be more dangerous, I’ve been easily able to avoid the issue. But there happens to be a great dive outfitter in Marathon, and after a talk with the head dive-mistress, she decided that we met standards (and I think needed more people to join a trip they already had planned!) and we were on our way to the Thunderbolt wreck. Though it was a little deeper than I prefer (100+ feet) it was still a great dive!

Florida Keys (part 2- Fun in the Coral)

/ Chris and Angie / Leave a comment

My muscle man and I were very excited about our trip down to the keys, my uncle and his fiance are scuba divers too, so we were so glad to get into the water! The seas were not really in our favor until later in the week, the first day we went out on my uncle’s boat and it was choppy and the visibility was poor, but we still had a great time! Despite the seas being not so great, they did clear up more through the week, so we got in several excellent reef dives =D I adore reefs, I could just spend hours looking at all the little details like the flamingo tongues and little christmas tree worms!  And the local dive shop had the red underwater filter for my gopro, so my photos and videos don’t have that greenish tint anymore!

 

Since my muscle man only got scuba certified last year, we haven’t really made any dive trips with other divers, so that was fun also. My uncle is an old pro, him and my dad have been divers longer than I’ve been alive, and his fiance is new at it like my muscle man. I’m nowhere near as comfortable or knowledgeable underwater as him, but it was fun that each couple had a veteran/novice dynamic, and my muscle man is convinced more than ever now that he wants to get advanced scuba training.

And naturally, no dive trip to the Florida Keys would be complete without a trip to Molasses reef to see the Christ of the Abyss statue. There were lots of snorkelers there which made for some cool pictures as well. The surrounding reef was very nice, though shallow, so many cool soft corals!

 

Bucket List: Cave Dives and Manatees

/ Chris and Angie / Leave a comment

My muscle man and I decided that his birthday weekend would be a great time to take a little long weekend road trip! And since our roommate had Monday off for Martin Luther King Day, he decided to tag along!! With the recent cold snap, I figured that it would be a perfect time to go swim with the Manatees in Crystal River Florida!! I’ve been before, but my muscle man never has, and it’s really such an awesome experience! Of course, since it was his birthday, he decided we would also take a diversion to a cavern about an hour away for a little scuba diving!

There are actually two cave/cavern dive locations we had to choose from, Blue Grotto and Devil’s Den. I’ve actually been to Blue Grotto before, and would have been my choice, but our roommate was with us and not a certified diver, so we decided Devil’s Den gave him a cooler swim since he would be down in the cave with us. This was my our first time diving in an overhead environment, which is admittedly a little more dangerous than I would normally venture, but my muscle man was set on it! So after some assurance from the proprietor that it was safe so long as we stayed in the main chamber we were ready to suit up and dive in. Our roommate stayed at the surface and snorkeled while we went into the icy water, it was quite the experience! I mostly got video inside the cave since our GoPro isn’t the best at still photography, especially in a darkened cave.

 After our dive, we found the best little local restaurant, they had the most amazing rice-cereal breaded chicken! And mac-n-cheese! And sweet tea in massive mason jars, of course haha!

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon at  Rainbow Springs park, which happened to be on the way between Devil’s Den and Crystal River. It was such a cool park, and we were able to bring the puppy with us for some exercise after she had to spend the morning in her kennel in the hotel waiting for us to dive and enjoy lunch. Not only was the park positively gorgeous, our puppy loved it, and was so happy to have so many trails to lead us down into the marshes. We thought about going back the next day for a swim, since the hot springs feed into the river it makes the water quite warm, but never quite got around to it.

 


Sunday we set out for our manatee tour at day break, and we all felt quite a bit stupid knowing we were about an hour away from jumping into water, considering that there was frost on our car windows! Lucky for us, the river is hot-spring fed, which is why the manatees come into the water in the first place… So the cold was actually good, it would mean more manatees wanted in the warmer water!  The sun warmed things a bit, but man the water still stung, even when we got closer to the spring. But the manatees were amazing, my muscle man and our roommate were both like little giggly girls when they started seeing them hehe! And there were a few little pups that were just so cute and so curious, it was so fun and really worth the near hypothermia =P

There were some great trails in the Crystal River area, so we decided to spend the afternoon hiking with the puppy, thankfully it had warmed up quite a bit since our frosty morning, and the sun was awesome at raising our spirits and capping off a great little weekend getaway!

Bucket List: SCUBA Diving (again)

/ Chris and Angie / 1 Comment

 

This year has really been quite an adventure for my muscle man and I! This is really more of a ‘bucket list’ item for him as I’ve already checked it off mine… I’ve been a certified diver for 13 years now, but had gotten out of practice since I didn’t have anyone to go with until now! So even though  I was a little worried about diving into such an expensive hobby (pun intended =P) I’m really glad my muscle man decided to get certified!

The best thing about him deciding to get into scuba is that we actually live about 15 minutes away from a great little quarry that’s been flooded and turned into a dive location. It’s actually the place I took my check out dives when I got certified(it’s like the road test when you get a driver’s license, you have to pass a written test, but then you have to go on several dives with your instructor before you can scuba dive on your own). And as fate would have it, it’s also where my muscle man wound up going to do his check out dives too!

I went with his group for a bit of a refresher for myself, there were actually quite a few parents of kids in the group doing the same thing haha. My muscle man’s instructor decided they would do the required 4 scuba dives in one day, which was quite exhausting, but really fun!

Since that trip was mostly more about testing skills, and since we had a really big group, we didn’t get to see much of the quarry. But since it’s only 15 minutes from our house, we decided a few weeks later to go back just the two of us and get in a few more dives and have some fun.  =)

This trip was a lot more relaxed, and it was great to get into the water with my muscle man and swim around for a bit, and explore some of the less explored areas around the quarry. It goes down really deep, something like 180feet, but we stayed shallow since there was this terrible thermocline (level of freezing ass cold water) at about 40′.

So aside from dipping down into that cold area to check out a wrecked car or something, we stayed shallow and just took our time checking things out. As we were swimming around, I noticed the absolute coolest thing I’ve seen while diving in freshwater… jellyfish… no really… A JELLY freaking FISH… In freshwater! I tried to get a photo of it, but without a macro filter or any advanced settings on my little point and shoot 35mm underwater camera, a blurry little smudge is the best I could do =P

It was still quite a fun little day out at the quarry, but we still haven’t fully explored all that’s in this little hole. So I’m sure that we will check it out again at some point, if for nothing else than to just keep our skills up between more adventurous dive trips. =)