Jug Hole – Well worth the walk!

James Garrett

8am sharp my alarm clock disrupted my sleep pattern, and it was time to clean the car out to make room for dive gear!  Today was the first weekend that Jug Hole would be open to cave diving for the season!  My dive here almost a year ago was one of my first side mount dives, so revisiting it should be a whole lot more fun.   It’s close to home, cheap ($4 entry fee), and a beautiful walk to the dive site, even though it’s far.  After talking to the ranger, we found out that we were the first to dive here since it opened yesterday.

Jug is a beautiful cave, albeit a short one.  Most popular for it’s amazing cavern and light chimney, the cave is just under 700ft in linear penetration, with a single jump which leads to a nasty restriction where most of the water comes from.  It has a well known restriction, called “Diamond Sands”, which refers to the minerals  in the sand near it, which reflect like diamonds.  There’s a clay room with beautiful layering, and several large rooms along the way.

October is FINALLY here! One of my favorite springs! from James Garrett on Vimeo.

Convict Springs – Doin’ it once to say you’ve done it…

James Garrett

Convict Springs is located at the River Rendezvous campground.  The people who own this are very friendly, and allow diving here free as long as you can prove side mount experience and full cave and sign their liability waiver during business hours.  Since it is free, if you choose to dive here, please at least eat something from their store, or tip them so that they continue to see some benefit in allowing cave diving.

The dive was tough to shoot video.  We decided to let Jeff Marchand be the lead diver, so that he could do all the gaps where the line has gone under the sand, as well as mark all the T’s for us.  This wasn’t the best decision, as the site is way too silty to have 3 divers in the cave at once.  I’ll at least post the video that I was able to gather, Michael Gibby is the diver in front of the camera.

Another Florida Spring from James Garrett on Vimeo.

Airport Sink – One of the most beautiful caves in Florida

James Garrett

After a fun night of camping, Jeff and I stopped by my parents place to drop off the scooters from the Ginnie dive the night before, grab fresh batteries, and head over to Tallahassee to dive one of my favorite caves, Airport Sink.  Now, I’ll be honest, it’s not the real name of this cave, but I hate to post the real name anywhere Google can find it.  This site is open to Wakulla Co Dive Club members ONLY.  Anyone else who dives here is trespassing and can be charged.  Please be careful when here, as site cleanups have revealed drug needles.  Broken glass is everywhere, as are beer cans and an assortment of other junk.

Airport Sink from James Garrett on Vimeo.

Scootering Devils – Mainline to the Insulation Rooms

James Garrett

After getting off work, Jeff Marchand and myself decided to head over to Ginnie Springs for a quick dive and some camping.  Since this was our first scooter dive with the camera, we kept it simple and went mainline to the Insulation Rooms.

Devils Ear to the Insulation Rooms from James Garrett on Vimeo.

“Trapped” in History….

“Trapped” in History….

James Garrett

After a long weekend of moving (I live on the 3rd floor, it wasn’t fun), it was time to goof off a bit.  North Florida is currently having some of the best conditions I’ve ever seen since I started cave diving.  Sadly these conditions are still terrible compared to the clear water I remember when I was much younger and going to these same sites to swim.  Jeff arrived at my place around 10am, so we packed up and headed to Stacey’s place to carpool over to Cave Excursions to get fills.  After that, we went to talk to the landowner, who is extremely cave diver friendly.  He said we could dive the sink, and to be careful.

After a short drive, we were on a dirt road with no signs, but did manage to quickly find the sink hole.  There were concrete steps built and the land was cleared so that you could back right up and throw your gear in the water.  No picnic tables, but who am I to complain?  You can really tell the water level is low here, below all of the steps, so site entry here is difficult at best.  After gearing up and doing a bubble check, we were ready to head off!

We had mucked up the bottom a bit while getting our fins on and floating at the surface, but the water source was nice and cool, so we followed that into the cave, finding the primary line just before the overhead.  Once in the cave we were greeted with at least 30-40′ visibility, better than most people who have been around longer than me have seen.  Once in the cave, I was a bit perplexed that the size wasn’t quite what I had expected, as someone had told me that “Leon Sinks and Peacock had sex and this is what came of it”, but after swimming a few 100ft upstream, I was greeted by gigantic rooms, where my view was limited by the visibility, at times I could only see one wall.  Because of the visibility, it’s a great cave to have a team of 3 helping light the whole place.  Jeff was leading, Stacey was next, and I was in 3rd place, so I got to enjoy the view as those two lit up the whole place for me.  Around 1000-2000ft upstream, cave life heavily picked up, something I hadn’t expected.  Blind Crayfish were everywhere, big ones too!  There were also worms in the silt, I really have no idea what those things are.

I hate to write about the man made parts of the cave, but this one is special.  The 100ft markers are written on duct tape, which was wrapped around #18 twisted/knotted line.  Some of this belonged to Sheck Exley I believe, although I’m going to have to research things a bit more and figure out where exactly the markers and line came from.

After about 35 minutes of swimming upstream, we returned and exited.  Since we were in back mount, getting out was a nightmare.  We decided to take our tanks and harness off in the water and come back for the gear after we got out of our dry suits.

Touring the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

James Garrett

Since I flew out with JetBlue from IAD at 4pm, the Air and Space Museum was a perfect thing to do.  It’s $15 to park and free to enter.  I had heard that this location was better than the one just off the National Mall, and I certainly agree.  The museum is an indoor hanger which includes a Boeing 707, SR-71 Blackbird, Space Shuttle, and many more very cool aircraft.  Off to the far corner of the building there’s a flight tower, which features a tour guide from Dulles International Airport who explains the monitors and how they work.  Watching how organized the flight tower really is was very cool, the operator was able to explain all the information in front of us within minutes.

The main attraction I was wanting to see is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.  For those of you not familiar, the SR71 was a spy plane that is faster than any other plane ever made (and I think still is).  Here‘s a really neat site I found that has lots of information on the plane.

My favorite part of the museum after visiting was the flight simulator.  Whitney and I did the interactive flight simulator, where I was the gunner and she was the pilot.  The simulators allow you to do a full 360 degree turn while flying, or it will even hang you upside down for extended periods of time.  All in all the highlight of the trip.

Kayaking the Shenandoah River

James Garrett

Today Whitney and I headed west to do a day trip from Washington DC and kayaked the Shenandoah River.  We rented kayaks from the Down River Canoe Company, which were pricey at $39/ea, but it did include the transportation 12 miles up river, which gave us just over 5 hours of kayaking time when you included lunch.  For lunch, we packed sandwiches and found a really neat rock face to eat on.  The further upstream you go on the river, the more minor rapids you face, although none that we saw during our 12 mile route were all that bad.  The front desk there will loan you dry bags for cameras, and they also watch your keys for you.  All in all, a GREAT day on the water.

Off to a hole in the woods…

James Garrett

Today Jeff and I had planned to hit up a spring near Wakulla, but the landowner is no longer allowing access, so we were able to take things slow and get a late start to our day.  This was a sinkhole which neither of us had dove before, but we knew it was gorgeous from photos. Ben has taken some excellent underwater shots, which can be found here.

This was one of those sinks that really makes you think about pollution.  It’s right by a major road in Tallahassee, and the land surrounding it is being used to dump all sorts of garbage.  If you recognize this site and decide to dive it, please be very careful, as homeless people are living here, littering the place with needles, beer bottles, liquor bottles, and various other trash.  Due to the pristine nature of this site, and how fragile it is, I’m going to limit my blog post to only surface photos.

Upon surfacing, we were greeted by four homeless people, three of which showed warning signs that they were on “meth”, and all 4 drunk. We were as nice as we could possibly be, but hurried back to the truck where we could take full advantage of our 2nd amendment right to protect ourselves.  They were very friendly, but I’m completely unfamiliar with drugs, so I didn’t know if they could become violent or turn on us.

Cave Diving on the Wacissa River

James Garrett

Jeff and I woke up early — 6am to head to the Wacissa River and do some cave diving.  We had been looking at the Geological Survey and found several potential leads.  We found a place that rents canoe’s (link here), although at $30/day it’s not cheap.  Wish my boat didn’t have a leak in it, we could have saved money AND not had to paddle, but I’ll deal with that once I move back to High Springs.  The Wacissa river is excellent for Kayaking and Canoeing, as you’ll see from the photos at the end of this post.

Our first stop was Little Blue Spring.  This spring is gorgeous from the surface, and we were very excited to see crystal clear water flowing out of the spring run.  Since this site was on tampadiving, we were almost positive that we would find cave here. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any cave here, so we had to continue on.

We found another spring run, this time Garner, a very long run with several shallow spots and logs that force you to get out and pull the boat. We saw that there was line in this one, so we geared up and took a look.  The line here is extremely fragile, so we ran our own line the first 600ft of the system.  About 400-500ft penetration, there’s a T, which we went to the right at.  On exit, we were faced with zero visibility practically the whole way, and when I mean zero, I mean it was so muddy that I couldn’t tell my light was on at times.  I would suggest staying out of this system unless you’re extremely comfortable in zero viz.

After heading out, Big Blue Spring was our next destination.  We were told that this one had cave, but hadn’t actually been there before.  Upon arriving, we saw several swimmers, this appears to be a popular spot to park the boat, drink beer, and swim.  We pulled the canoe over to the side and started to gear up again.  The bottom of the spring is about 40ft deep, with a circular opening that’s like swimming through a fire hydrant, worse than Devil’s Ear or Jackson Blue.  Once through the entrance, there’s a no mount restriction (you might can do it with just one tank off, but no mount is easier on the cave) just before the mainline of the cave starts.  The mainline goes about 200ft and then dead ends.  This system is very pretty, but short.

Starting to get hungry, we packed our gear and headed home.  On the way, we decided to check out one more spring, this time Minnow Springs.  At first, I started to not get in the water, as the basin looked extremely small, but decided to give it a look just in case.  After looking, I saw that there was potential, and grabbed the sidemount tanks and suited up.  Once inside the cave, I was thrilled to see that there was no line!  This system is the first one I’ve ever been in without line!  I laid about 80ft and then hit a no mount restriction too small for me….darn!

Convict Springs

James Garrett

After boating up river looking for potential leads, Jeff and I ran across the Suwannee River Rendezvous Resort & Campground, where there was a spring run.  We didn’t make the connection that this was Convict Springs, so we went to the office and asked the manager if we could dive here, only realizing what cave it was when we saw the map on the wall.  This is a nice place to camp, it has hot showers and a place to eat all on site.  Upstream from here is a great canoe spot as well!

We got in the water at about 10pm, and had to be out by 11pm.  Because of this, we limited dive time to 45 minutes.  Convict is a beautiful system, with rocks that look like egg shells, formed around something (possibly clay) that has been washed away.   There’s also a tree root growing dead center of one of the cave’s large rooms.  The system is incredibly fragile, and very silty.  If you’ve not been in many silt outs, wait to go here until you gain experience in them.