Or at least here's what I used to do as a cave diver living in Arlington Va.
Find more cave divers in your immediate area. I used the NSS/CDS and NACD membership lists to find them. In my case I found I lived 4 blocks from the lady who co-authored the first cave diving manual! In the Metro DC area join Capital Divers. Lots of cave divers in the group.
Get a van or hook up with someone who has a van. I bought one and put 300,000 plus miles on it diving!
I liked a team of 3 but 4 works just as well since you can have 2 dive teams of two.
Here was a typical trip for me: Meet at my house, pack the van (with FULL tanks). Everyone would drive 2 hours and sleep 4 (or 6 if 4 diver trip). Arrive at little river about 8 or 9 am. Do a check out dive just to make sure all equipment and body parts are working properly. Do a minimum of two dives a day, which really meant everyone has 2 sets of doubles (plus O2 and stage bottles). Can you say heavy van?
We usually did trips on holiday weekends as most of us were government or contracters at government sites. So if monday was the holiday we'd take off friday, leave thursday around 4 or 5 pm, arrive in Branford early friday am. do the checkout dive, fill tanks and hit the planned sites. Dive 2 on friday saturday and sunday and possibly one on monday. Drive back and arrive monday evening!
Whats the problem ?? LOL - I always thought the divers who could drive to a dive site in an hour never appreciated our dedication.
Of course I'm moving to LA and will now be about an hour from the millpond.
There are incidentally a couple of cave dives in the area but you have to REALLY want to dive to do them. They are more sumps than caves usually - or quarries.
later....
