Diving Adventures!

As always, there is a video below if you prefer!

The Back Story

Shelby,Wendy, and I have been going through the process of scuba certification. We finally got certified almost two weeks ago. It was a challenge at times, but very gratifying when we completed the training. We took our PADI course through a local dive shop, Underwater Adventure. They were very helpful, I'm grateful Wendy and Shelby found them.

One of the reasons we pushed to complete our certification course before last week was because of the family vacation we had planned. We were taking our annual trip to Okaloosa Island, Florida and wanted to dive in the Gulf of Mexico. This whole idea of scuba diving is very new to us, we had never talked about it before a few months ago! So we rented our gear and off we went!

The first day in Florida, Wendy called to set up our first dive. We found a place in Panama City that could take us out to some jetties. Apparently this is great for beginning divers, they refer to it as "the kiddie pool." As luck would have it, Wendy became ill and we had to postpone our dive.

Wendy's illness lasted a couple of days and toward the end of it, the weather went south. By the time she was feeling better, the shop where we had planned our dive cancelled their trips due to low visibility. We were bummed. Little did we know the proverbial silver lining to the cloud which was coming our way!

After a little research we decided to look at Vortex Spring. Our local shop takes trips there,

so we had at least heard of it. We called and found out it probably suited what we were looking for a little bit better anyway. We made our plans and off we went!

Dive Summary

We originally planned three dives. Shelby's certification only allows her to go 40', so we planned our dives for 35'. In our dive plan (refer to the PADI site if you need an explanation) we set up for three 30 minute dives with 30 minute surface intervals in between. Again, refer to PADI for a real explanation but basically the surface interval is to make sure there isn't too much nitrogen in your blood. Feel free to comment if I am wrong!

One of the points of planning a dive is to make sure you are safe and know where your parameters are. This way you can have a lot more fun without having to burden yourself with unnecessary worry. "Plan well Kimosabe," a wise man once said! Things may not always go exactly to plan, but you will be a lot more secure.

Our first dive was fun. It took me a minute to get comfortable with my buoyancy control, I didn't have an instructor there cajoling me. We settled in at about 6' where we all adjusted. From there we swam off and explored. Vortex is beautiful. The water is 68 degrees year round and crystal clear. There are caves and other places to swim through, along with a wide variety of fish. We looked at fish, swam around, and had a good time. Our maximum depth on dive # 1 was 20' and we stayed down for 30 minutes.

Our second dive was also an adventure. We swam to the opening of the spring, which apparently goes to a depth of around 150'. It was a little freaky looking into the abyss! We were all a lot more comfortable, we swam around much more freely. On this dive, Shelby had a little trouble equalizing (ask our friend PADI) so we mainly stayed at around 12' to 15'. Our maximum depth on this dive was 25' and we saw a lot more. We stayed down about 33 minutes on this dive, we had to surface once for Shelby's ears to feel better.

In Closing

All three of us loved the entire experience. Everything worked out exactly as it needed to. Even Wendy's unfortunate illness enabled us to wind up at Vortex.

We are already looking forward to our next dive. Maybe we'll try the gulf again, maybe some more spring or quarry diving. Either way, we have found another activity we all love which opens the door of adventure even wider!

Raised Beds- Day 3

Again, if you prefer, the video version is below.

Technically this was probably the fourth or fifth day, but who's counting. We worked on bed #2 for about an hour two days during the week.

This bed was particularly challenging since the slope increases downhill. However, we were able to meet these challenges and continue to make progress.

I love what we are doing. This has involved the entire family and there are several gratifying moments as we meet and overcome obstacles. I am looking forward to getting the seeds in the ground and reaping the fruits of our labors! Either way, we are enjoying ourselves and learning a lot. I hope you enjoy tracking our progress, I'll keep posting about this until we have the project completed. Until next time, happy building!

Raised Beds- Day 2

This is the latest installment of Project:Raised Beds. If you prefer, there is a video version below.

We have finally completed the first bed. This is by far the most ambitious project we have taken on, but I am really enjoying myself. Where we are placing the beds, on a major slope, is bringing up several challenges. There are a few places that wind up being a little off, but the beds will still be very functional.

The only things left to do on the first bed are installing the PVC pipe, filling in the gaps, laying down some newspaper, and putting in the soil. We are going to get some good organic soil as soon as all of the beds are ready. I am loving this and can't wait to finish!

Raised Beds- Day 1

Wendy and I decided to build some raised garden beds. We have been growing some of our own vegetables for a few years, but with the inspiration of some friends have decided to increase our production. Our family has become progressively more conscious of what we eat and how we purchase food, so this is a logical step. It falls in line with our new "urban homesteading"attitude. We've also begun raising chickens, so you can probably catch my drift. Enough back story!

Wendy has done the majority of the research. She found a lot of great sites with good, easy to follow instructions. Of course we are facing several obstacles along the way; we're building the beds on a slope, it's the dead of summer, and we're not the handiest family in the world!

We are having fun, though. Right now we are focused on getting the first bed completely finished.We are building three in total. All of the beds will be 4' wide by 14' long. Our goal is to be able to fill them in this weekend so we can begin sowing some seeds for fall crops. We are installing PVC pipe so we can have hoops over the beds to be able to grow through the winter. For us this is all a little ambitious, but I love a good stretch. If you would rather see the video version, check below!