Scuba Adventures

In the summer of 2013, my fiancé got me a pretty awesome present; PADI scuba lessons! I had always wanted to get scuba certified, and was so excited to finally take the classes and explore a whole new world!

So far scuba has been a tremendous adventure and I have loved every minute of it!

I signed up for classes in September. I had to take two classes, and then two pool sessions, and to get certified I had to have 4 open water dives. As fate would have it, my first class I drove to was through a huge thunderstorm, just a few days before the September 2013 flood.

My first pool session was the day after all the roads got flooded, and John was going with me to do a refresher. He hadn't scuba-dived in over 5 years. We checked the roads and made sure we could even get to class, and it turns out just enough roads were not flooded that we could get there!

Highway 25 was flooded for most of the day, but was done to this level when we drove by

Most roads looked like this, underwater and no way through

So after I finished my class and passed the written test, it was time for an Open Water Dive. We were going on a cruise in the Fall, and thought we might have a chance to do my open water dives there. That didn't end up happening, and it wasn't until May that I ended up getting my open water dives.

There are a few places to dive in Colorado (big lakes like Aurora, which I hear is very very cold!) But I opted to go with FlatIrons Scuba to Homestead Crater, Utah.

John went with me (more diving experience for him!) and we drive the 8 hour road trip to Utah. Our mistake was going after watching the new Godzilla movie first, because when we left it was already late at night and we had a loooong drive ahead of us!

We switched off halfway through, in Wyoming, and I took over driving for the last 4 hours. Utah had a lot of deer road kill, which I'd never seen before. In Maine, if someone hits a deer there are usually three trucks already there fighting over who gets to take the carcass home.

We got to the hotel at 5am in the morning, exhausted. To our great dismay, we found out there had been a mix-up with the reservations, and we didn't have a room. The hotel was kind enough to let us sleep in a room for three hours however, and we were so grateful!

Homestead Crater has an underground hot spring, and it's one of the few places you can dive and not need any kind of wetsuit. It's too warm for there to be any life, but you can find a toy lobster and turtle sitting near the bottom.

This was a two day dive, two dives on one day, two dives on the second.

Our room, bed covered in scuba gear. 

This is the top of the crater. Looking down the bridge you would see the water underneath.  

Looking down

After we finished the classes (and I became an official PADI Openwater diver!) We had the long drive back home again. This time it was day, so we could see our surroundings!

Utah is a pretty state

We got through Utah pretty quick. Most of the drive was in Wyoming.

Pronghorn Antelope!

Almost missed the sign again! Finally back in Colorado!

In 2014 John and I got married, and decided to take our scuba certifications a step further for our honey moon. So, we went back to FlatIrons Scuba (those guys are AWESOME) and took the Advanced Open Water dive classes and pool session. 

For the dives, we invited John's parents to go with us (they hadn't been diving since they got certified around ten years ago?) and we all went to Key Largo Florida!

This was another crazy adventure. There were four dives each day for two days. Two in the morning, and two after lunch. The sea was rough, and we ALL got sea sick!

Normally I'm the only one who gets motion sick, but John got sick first, and Deb and Bob both got sick in their boat. I was the only one who threw up the second day, what a rough ride!

The only real difference between open water diver and advanced is that you can go a lot deeper (100ft instead of just 30ft) and it was a very fascinating experience going that deep. 

We followed a rope down (they suggest you guy gloves, and I am SO GLAD we did, those ropes would have hurt and likely had fire coral on them!) so we went from the thrashing jumbling surface where the waves tossed you around like a drowning buoy (but we had our regulators in of course, so we could breathe!) and as you descend, hand over hand into a deepening blue you stop getting tossed around and everything feels still and calm.

It was beautiful and strange.

We went down to the U.S. Spiegel, a ship sunk on purpose that sank wrong. later a hurricane uprooted it and set it down how it was intended to sink.

While it was fascinating seeing the sunken ship, you had a lot less time underwater because you are deeper, and I admit I preferred the shallow dives where you can really see more!

Someone saw a tiger shark at the deeper depth however, and I admit I wish I could have seen it!

I DID get to see a shark on the trip however, a beautiful nurse shark! I had always wanted to see a shark in the wild, so that's one check mark on my life's to see list!

I wasn't able to take many photos until my last dive. We are not allowed to take pictures while we are in class because it is distracting. So, once I passed all of my dives, my last free dive I took as many pictures as I could!!!

Rainbow Reef lead the tours, and they were a fantastic crew!!

Some birds saw us off

Leaving the shore behind...

These darn jelly fish were everywhere, and they had a pretty mean sting to them!

Swim through. These are awesome because I had finally gotten a strong control of my bouncy and loved swimming through without touching anything! 

Our dive guide stopped by some coral where he knew a moral eel liked to hang out. Much to all of our surprise, the eel came out of the coral and started swimming toward us. These guys can be pretty dangerous, they have a nasty bite and much like a komodo dragon, they have a lot of bacteria in their mouth. If you get bit, it's not just the bite you have to worry about.

The eel swam toward us and we all backed up, and it went right by, swam around some rocks where two spiny lobsters were hiding. It turned its head at them, and snuck around the backside of the next rock, where WHAM! It grabbed a lone spiny lobster and swallowed the poor thing whole!

The first rock, where two lobsters were on guard

That was close...

Here he is around the second rock, lobster already mostly disposed of

The lobsters spine that fell off

Mmmh, dinner

This sting Ray was gorgeous! We got pretty close to it too!

Parrot fish

Squirrel fish

Barracuda!

Going through another swim through. Love these!

We learned about jellyfish stings on this trip. I had been stung before when snorkeling in Costa Rica, but this was different! These jerks left marks and geez did they sting!

Jellyfish Stings. My arm

John's Jelly fish stings.

So far this has been all of my scuba experiences, and I certainly hope for more! Just, make a less rocky boat next time! We were all taking a ton of Dramamine and Bonine to try and keep the stuff in our system so we would feel less sick on the boat. It helped a bit, but it was still a rough ride! 

Looking forward to the next scuba adventure!!! (With hopefully more sharks!!!!)