Scuba Diving Trip (July)

It's awful hard to get pictures uploaded to your computer without a digital camera, hence, me taking soooo long to get this posted. I'm finally writing about our dive trip we were able to take in mid-July. The month of June, David and I took lessons and became Scuba Certified. David's new step-dad Steve offered to let us go on a dive trip he was planning with his sons, Richard and Ryan to Catalina Island. It was some what stressful getting there, that same week David was in Puerto Rico on business and figured it would be more efficient to meet me in Los Angeles. So, (since Stella is 9 years from being able to certify) I dropped her off at my mom's house and they all watched her for the 5 days we were gone. It was so hard leaving her! I bawled as Stella waved goodbye from the porch (this being the first time she had waved good-bye, of course). That night I drove to Twin Falls and stayed at my brothers house. The next morning I was out of the house by 5am and on the long road to my Dad's house in Merced. I didn't mind all the country driving, I didn't mind sitting alone with my thoughts and pondering. It was when I hit that California traffic that messed up the drive! =) Don't worry though, I even beat my Dad home from work. I got there early evening and was able to spend at least a little (not enough) but a little time with Dad and Mary. The next morning I left for the 4 hour drive to Los Angeles to pick up my David, I had not seen him all week! I hated all three of us being in different places. I didn't like the feeling of us not all being together. After rough directions from the woman's voice on the GPS in my windshield (she received a nick-name on that trip....use your imagination), I picked up David and our vacation began! Our boat was called the Sand Dollar and it was nothing fancy at all. Tight space, bitty bunks (a bunch of stinky men) but we were there for the diving so it didn't matter.

Before we took off on the boat we ate at the pier

This is what we ate...

Delicious!!

Here are the bunks, there were 8 beds in this tiny room!

This is the back of the boat (above our bunks) with all the dive gear to suit 30 people plus the crew. And Catalina Island in the background.
Below are the pictures we took with our under water camera. The visibility was a lot more clear and the pictures don't give the scene we had justice! We found out later, even though it was a 50ft depth camera, it would only take pics at about 20ft deep. The further we went down, the greater the pressure and we couldn't click the button to take pictures. But, you get the general idea anyway!

This picture we're looking up, you can follow the bubbles up to the surface.

The colors were so vibrant. The coral was bright and the kelp was every color of green. The fish were like the kind you'd see from Finding Nemo. They weren't shy either, they'd come up and give our goggles kisses. We saw a lot of lobster. David said he saw a family of lobsters all cuddled together in a small cove looking up at him as he swam by.

Scuba Steve!

A previous diver found a sea slug and brought it up to the surface around the same time we were diving. When they threw him back in, he landed on David's head. And for those of you who know how incredibly squeemish David is, can only imagine how funny his reaction under water was!!

Sea Slug

Sea Slug floofing or farting, or whatever it is they do to protect themselves!

The creatures we saw whose photo's didn't turn out:

A lobster at 70ft deep the size of my daughter. Also in the same dive, a sting ray that floated so graciously by with a school of fish, the span being longer than my arm span. David saw a black sea bass on that dive as well, he said it was about 5 feet long. I guees the deeper you go, the bigger things get.

On the more shallow dives we saw several sting rays, lobsters, crabs, seals and flying fish. The last dive on one of the days made me nervous. It was getting dark and visibility was getting worse. I had a nervous feeling the whole dive. Suddenly just a few feet away from us swam AT the LEAST a 5 foot shark. Careful training teaches you to ascend slowly, so as to not expand your lungs to the point of bursting. Instincts, however, teach you to get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. Suprisingly, David was in awe and kept watching it, wanting to follow it, then looking for his dive buddy (me) was no where to be found. Just a trail of bubbles leading straight up out of the water. All in all, it was amazing. At a distance of course. That dive ended early.

Underwater Forest

HaHa! Me in all my gear... you can't tell but I am smiling and having a great time.

Gigantic gold fish were everywhere.

David would blow bubble rings at me, much like smoke rings, just less damaging to the lungs.

David at the surface

We did about 3-4 dives a day for 3 days. It was the most amazing experience and I was so excited to accomplish this long dreamed goal. We are already shooting ideas around for next summer and where we plan to dive.

The boat docked on Saturday evening back in Los Angeles and my Uncle Tony was kind enough to let us stay at his place, even though he was visiting Santa Barbara at the time. We ate at a great, very fresh sushi place that evening and slept like babies that night.

The next morning we went to Huntington Beach where David got up on a surf board for his first time. Then we stopped at my half sister's house. I had not seen Ashlee in several years and it just so happened to be her birthday that very day. It was wonderful catching up with her.

We didn't return home until 4am, David worked that morning and I was on the road again at 5am to pick Stella up. Exhausting, but very, very worth it.