December?!

See all of my photos from the weekend here, it's a link to facebook but you don't need it to see them :) 

On Saturday, Kate, Will, and I drove out to Ginnie Springs to check it out for a "winter" dive. Last time I was at Ginnie, there were essentially no other people because we were doing a galaxy dive late at night, but every weekend I had been there, it was a crazy epic drunk party of so many people floating down the river that the river itself turned into a sea of inflatable tubes, air mattresses, and a few pirate ships. But this weekend was a little different.

Looking up at Kate snorkeling over Devil's Eye.

As you can see in the picture above, there were really no other people around. Harry brought his awesome camera, as did Will, so we took endless amounts of pictures throughout the day. Aka I was absolutely in my element. 

Crystal clear water at the end of the spring run before it hits the river.

Our first dive was Devil's Eye/Ear/a little rock crevice. After exploring the crevice, we swam out the spring run to Devil's Eye and Devil's ear.

This is a picture I took of Kate swimming out the spring run. I am SCUBA diving below her as she snorkels out.

She was also taking pictures with my camera at the same time, so this is me swimming out simultaneously.

At the end of the spring run, Will and I dove down into Devil's Eye (the first picture of Kate above). There was also a little cavern with cool white rocks inside that we explored for a while. We also checked out the shells at the bottom of the basin and played around with the sunfish in the hole.

This buoy marks the entrance to the cave. The bubbles to the right are from a cave diver on deco and the seagrass in the background is at the edge of the river where the water turns tannic and starts flowing quickly.

We dove down near where the bubbles are coming up and played around in the intense flow coming up out of the spring. It was really hard to swim down!

Sunfish in the spring run near some cave diver's bottles. There were bluegills and red ears among others. I need to look up the different types, there are so many and they are not very shy... They will swim right up to your mask!

Will and I swimming back in the run. Photo by Kate. 

After our three mini dives, we went over to Ginnie Cavern. This is a cavern but is considered an open water dive, so we could bring lights in to explore. I left my camera behind for this dive because I wanted to get used to my new drysuit!!!! I was a little nervous because it's a little different than diving in a wetsuit, but after a minute or two of swimming around in the basin and learning to let air out of the back of my left arm and add air to the drysuit instead of the BC, life was good and I was dry and happy. The suit was amazing and once I get all of my sailing underlayers, I will be toasty warm and in the springs 24/7, not worrying about being a frozen fish anymore :)

Will and I getting out of the water after drysuit dive #1. We were the only people in the cavern... no crowds here in December!