Ginnie Springs Dive trip

It was quiet at first, like a whisper from a dream, slowly rolling into my conscienceness. What is that noise? My phone...A text message... " We cant dive if your asleep dummy!" shit....I groaned and streched. It was 7:12am and I was time to get moving. I called Scott back," yeah I'm up and leaving now." I had packed most of my gear the night before. I did a quick look around while climbing itto my boardshorts...fuck it's cold in here! I grabbed my keys and my smokes and went to the truck

The drive to Ginnie Springs is a long one from my house. Highway-17 north to SR-40 then west to 326. That will get you to I-75 north of ocala. Then you get off at exit 399 on to 441 and follow that to 27/41, After that you in high springs looking for the juction to 318. It's a nice cruise on the way up and it's maybe 2 hrs. Once you arrive at the park, your stopped at the guard shack, given a fee ticket and pointed to the main building.

I walked inside and over to the counter. After signing the waiver and watching a short video, I paid the 27 dollar entry fee and bought a underwater camera. It was a 35mm camera in a watertight case and it was reusable. Nice!

By this tine Scott had arrived and we headed over to the first spring. Ginnie springs has seven springs on site, only four are worth diving. The first one is ginnie spring itself. The other three are devil's ear, devil's eye and the slough.
We found a place to park and got geared up. The walk from the parking area to the stairs is maybe 150 feet, which is nice when carrying seventy pounds of gear. We had planned the dive for 60 Ft , the lowest part of the spring. That gave us 50 min of no-decompression bottom time. We crept into the 72 degree water and over to the cavern entrance. We checked the time and began our decent in to the spring. The entrance is two large openings in the rock floor the lead into the upper chamber. From there you follow a guide line down into the " ballroom" I might note the now is a good time to turn on your dive light, the ambient light fades quickly and leaves you in something not very unlike complete utter darkness. That's not completely true, once your eyes adjust you can see the sunlight from the cavern opening above you. From the end of the guideline, you swim down and off the to right a little. There you will find the gate. The grate makes the end of the road and is where the cavern connects with the rest of the cave system. We explored the inside of the ballroom, which has it's own small passages and small chambers wore out of the limestone rock by millennia of billions of gallons of water.

It's easy for me to fall in love with the environment down there. It's cold and dark and silent, aside from the rhythmic sound of your breath, and the noise the expelled air bubbles make hitting the rock ceiling. A no air sound, A dead sound. It is eerily peaceful. There is no talking in scuba diving, no idle chitchat while at depth. Sometimes this is a pain in the ass when trying to convey and idea to your dive buddy, but for the most part, it's pure heaven. You get to explore a world that some will never see. It is quietly powerful and it is made better like most activities, without speaking. If you see something worth sharing, just a simple tap and point is enough, if it interests anyone else great, if not, then the enjoyment is all for you.

Fifty minutes seemed to fly by and soon we began our accent. After we surface and drop our gear in the truck, we head out to find some lunch. Floyds dinner was the best option that we could find. This place was great, real fifties style dinner with all the chrome and pastels you could want. Filled ourselves up on food, then back to the air station to fill the tanks.

The next dive was devil's eye and the slough. The slough is a 40ft long 4ft wide crack in the earth that leads nowhere. It was rather silted up already and there was little to see. From there we swam down to Devil's eye. This was a circular opening about 25 Ft across and 15ft deep. On the north side of the rock wall was an opening in the cave system. We followed this back and found the sign. It has a picture of the grim reaper and the notice reads.






"Prevent your own death, go no further! "

Fact- Over 300 divers, including open water instructors, have died exploring cave's like this one!

Fact- You need cave training and cave dive equipment to cave dive!

Fact - Without cave trainning and cave equipment, divers can die here!

Fact- It Can happen to You!


There is nothing in this cave worth dying for, Do not go beyond this point!







We continued past the sign to the cave entrance. Open water divers are not allowed to bring lights into this spring, this keeps non-trained divers out of the cave system. You can dive this cavern as far as the abeint light will take you. With Scott taking the lead we crept slowly into the cave entrance and took a look around. Down there it's pretty dark. Scott took the camera and moved forward. The entrance gets really tight and there is a downward slit, here my tank was scraping on the roof of the cave and I was not very willing to go much further, Scott, as usual wanted to look a little more closely. I signaled him the I was staying put. He acknowlaged this and only went a little further. I lost sight of him in the darkness and then flash. He snapped a picture. I could now only follow his movement by the direction the flash from the camera came from. I really don't like this and the reason is, I have every faith in scott's diving skill and Knowlege. It is Murphy's law that puts me on edge. I feel that if something is going to go wrong, it will happen at the one moment I can't do anything about it. Scott thinks I'm paranoid. He's probley right. I am getting more relaxed with each dive though, I realized that Scott knows the risk he takes and if it's cool with him, I shouldn't sweat it. So I don't.

We looked around a bit longer and then resurfaced. I think at this time Scott was really done for the day, but I was eager to fill up and dive the ballroom again. So we did. It was a shorter dive then the last two. But it was nice to look around that cavern again. We had got more film for the camera, so we just shot anything we could think of. Underwater photography is something I'm interested in learning. Most of the pics we shot came out bad. But there were a few good ones. After the last dive we went to a bar and grill called kazboz, near I-75. We drank a few beers and relaxed from hard days relaxation. The waitress brought Scott a Guinness can and a frosty mug, since the didn't have it on tap. Now any Guinness drinker knows that once you open the can you have to pour it immediately, otherwise you lose most of the nitrogen, resulting in a bad pour. Scott, In the most polite way possible mentioned it to the waitress, Instead of just listening and saying thank you for the info, This snotty fat cow retorts with " I used to own a pub in the UK, and none of my customers there would even drink this crap...And I didn't open it.. The bartender did. Sorry."

My fucking ass, you lying whore! I have two problems with this answer.

# 1. If you owned and bartended a pub in the UK, than what the fuck are you doing here in this place?

#2. If you know so much about Guinness and the correct procedure for pouring the world best, most perfect beverage, Why the fuck did you bring my friend here this abomination! Why didn't you say to the bartender, don't open the Guinness, it must be poured at the table, or please take this back, I cannot serve this.


If she had brought the can of Guinness to the table and gave it closed to Scott, or,... and a much better tip idea, Opened the can herself at the table and poured it in front of us. I would have been impressed. Scott too, She showed no proper respect for Guinness and treated it like it was fuckin bush lite!

I wanted to point out that she now has no fucking excuse for this alcholic abortion sitting here between the two us, like the misty-eyed unwanted orphan watching while the line of new parents file past, bring to a close to yet another unsuccesful adoption day.

Anyway we didn't stay long.


We parted ways and headed back to our respective homes. Scott had reminded me that Prairie Home Companion was on and I got to catch the last 25 minutes on the radio. It was a long and tired ride home. It was a good tired though. I pulled in the my driveway, patted max and princess and took a long shower. Flopping into my bed, I wondered if I ever really wanted to leave it again.




sungod357