This past weekend was a busy one! superbeetleman and I drove down to Ginnie after work on Friday and made it there by about 10PMEST. We met DSW, Gibbon, Cardzard(and Roxanne), and KBeck at the campsite which consisted of a huge tarp/tent, 2 large picnic tables, lots of room for several tents and, of course, lots of food. The fascilities at Ginnie Springs are very nice, they have a bathhouse on the main camping area that includes hot showers, and clean restrooms. They also have identical bathhouses at the main spring and at the parking near the Devil system. The shop was decently stocked and it also doubled as a small convenient store/souvenier stop. They also had a deli built on next to it.
Onto the diving... for those that haven't been to these sites(was new to me).
Saturday morning after eating ziplockbag omlets(which is an excellent idea!) Beetle and I decided it was time to start diving. We suited up and drove out to the parking at the main spring. According to some of the regulars, the water was still high from the flooding that occured during the hurricanes, but it was still extremely clear. Parking was ample and there is a boardwalk with 3-4 staircases leading into the spring basin. Ginnie Spring consisted of a medium sized basin that decended to about 25' at which point you could access a restriction in the limestone that led out to the first of two caverns. The basin itself was surrounded by a very natural boarder of cypress trees leading to the banks, eel grass, and petrified trees/stumps. Looking carefully enough and you can find large bass, turtles, snakes(get into that later), and of course extrmely curious bream throughout the entire dive. The caverns at the main spring have been deemed safe for OW divers as you always have eye contact with sunlight and the cave system has been grated off preventing entry. There are also permenant lines attached incase you need it to find your way out. The cavern bottom is mostly rocky and sandy so when there are several people in the cave, especially those with bouyancy problems, it can get a bit silted, but it settles relatively quickly. Searching around the cavern enough will probably find you a catfish or two and of course the bream. The high point came towards the end of the dive when a large water moccassin snaked its way near the bottom of the basin. We cautiously(very cautiously) watched this 4-5' long snake(~3" around) slither on the bottom of the surface poking around in several cracks and crevices. We kept a good distance away and watched, not wanting that thing to feel threatened or consider us food. Bream and bass followed it around, which I thought was odd, and the snake never threatened to take a bite out of any of them.
Mid-day after diving Ginnie Spring, we headed down the road a bit further to the Devil System parking. The Devil System consists of 3 springs, Devils Eye, Devils Ear, and Little Devil. We dove Devils Eye and Little Devil, the high water caused for quite a bit of nasty tannic water in the Sante Fe River where the Devils Ear spring is located. Devils Eye is a cylinder shaped hole in the surface of the spring run that drops down to about 25' where you can find a cave entrance that will eventually lead to Devils Ear(not cave cert'd so we couldn't tell you from experience). The Little Devil is a pretty long crack on the surface of the spring run that drops to ~35'. At the bottom of the fissure, you can look up at the trees making for a great picture.
Once we finished off at the Devils system, we decided to drive further south to Blue Grotto to check out what it was about. We got there about an hour and 15min before they were going to close so we were in quite a hurry after our 10min dive briefing video. The shop is small and lightly stocked with dive gear. There is a small restroom with a shower. Blue Grotto is basically hole in the ground that opens up to a large cavern in the side of a high bluff. The cavern is pretty big and goes down to a depth of about 100' with sunlight always visible. As OW divers we were briefed that it was safe for us to go down to about 50' where there is a flouresent rope marking where OW divers are allowed and Cavern/Cave/AOW are allowed to continue. There is a lexan diving bell that continually has fresh air pumped into it from a compressor at the surface - the bell is translucent lexan so you can view your surroundings while in open air. There is also a lighting system in the cavern giving you ample light to find your way out if your personal light failed. There were several catfish, minnows, and turtles to be found in the grotto. The bottom is very silty which can reduce the visibility after being kicked up - we arrived towards the end of the day and the water was pretty silted up - from what I've been told if you arrive in the morning it can be crystal clear. Pretty neat dive, but I'm in no large hurry to get back.
We got back to the campsite around 6-7pm and did a bit more of the same, ate food, mingled with the ScubaBoarders, and talked SCUBA. ScubaDillo met up with us at the campsite, apparently he had been solodiving earlier that day in the Ginnie main without any of us knowing. He agreed that the chicken was fantastic and it showed in his eating habits!
Sunday morning we woke up bright and early and had more bagged omlets
Afterwards, KBeck, beetle, and I decided to dive the Ginnie Spring again. This time we would be diving it much earlier, the water was crystal clear since other divers hadn't come in and silted it up just yet. The dive was much of the same, even down to the snake, except for the fact that we enjoyed pristine clear spring water visibility! For the badnews... my new Olympus camera flooded... arg... I just ordered it last week and had just arrived Monday - this was its first time wet! I'm not sure of the cause just yet, everything checked out before closing the casing and it didn't leak while submerged a bit, once under pressure the case filled with water drowning my camera. The 280+ pics I had from the previous day are on Gibbons laptop, so they aren't totally lost and I'm hoping to post them in a few days - even if that means asking Gibbon to mail me a CD, hopefully I'll be able to recover the pics from the flashcard though...
After that dive, we went back to the campsite and packed our tent, bags, and belongings, said our goodbyes to everyone who came to the Megadive party and headed out to Devils Den. We'll definately be back to Ginnie Springs in the future.
I'm not sure when Scubadillo left, I think he got kinda irked when Ken took the chicken bowl and put it on the picnic table. I believe he considered that a 'short-joke', got pissed, and left. I think he'll be back though!
We arrived at Devils Den which has a small camping area, a small loading/unloading area that allows you 10min parking near the picnic tables and pavillions which consists of a pretty large area. After unloading, you are to drive around the office to a large camping area. The shop is small and it was cleaned out as far as gear - not sure if they haven't restocked since the hurricanes or if they were just ill-stocked and had a busy day. They had a small restroom with a shower as well. A quick briefing had us ready for the water and what to look for while were in the open water cavern(? contradiction in terms? not really? I'll explain). Devils Den is a unique site, there is a hole(10-15' in diameter) on the surface of the ground that opens up to a large open-air cavern in which case the bottom of the cavern is filled with water about 20-25' below the grounds surface. You can ascend directly to the surface of the water without a large worry of being in an overhead environment - there are overhead situations in the water consisting mainly of small swim-throughs created from rocks that have fallen against the cavern wall. There is a path cut from the side of the cavern that leads to the surface, away from the main cavern opening. One person is allowed on the staircase leading to the water at a time and there is a platform at the bottom for easy fin donning. When you're in the cavern, the view is breathtaking. High cavern walls that go up and around you at the top except for the opening which has plantlife hanging from the opening and large rays of sunlight shining through illuminating the large clear pool of water beneath you. There are some HUGE catfish in the water that aren't shy at all
The cavern also makes a home to small minnows and bream(some of which look albino and hang around the bottom of the cavern at deeper depths). Looking around the walls of the cavern will give you a first hand look of some of the marine life from thousands of years ago. There are fossilized shells, sand dollards, seabiscuits, ect embedded in the cavern walls. Apparently they have also excavated fossilized skeletons of prehistoric sabortooth tigers, sloths, ect as well. We did two dives and had a great time on both dives even though, again, we arrive towards the end of the day and the water wasn't as clear as it would have been in the early morning... and then it was time to head home
We'll be hitting this site in future trips for sure.
All in all we had an excellent time and met some cool people. The diving was wonderfull, water temperatures on all dives were 72-74ºF, which is quite comfortable compared to the 68º we were getting used to in the panhandle springs. Looking forward to the next big trip, where-ever it may be, but I'm also glad to be back home. Time to get my gear serviced and see about my camera. Like I said earlier, it was a great time with top-notch company. Thanks for the effort on putting this together Ken, we'll be back in the Spring!
