Florida Keys Journal...

by Dana

Thursday and Friday:  

We left at about 12am to drive to Florida!  Last time I did this I was about 8 years old! We made a lot of bathroom stops and stopped for a little snooze which turned out to be a 6 hour nap - oops!  Fell asleep.  Listened to some oldies music and murder shows on satellite radio (don't judge we all like those shows)! We stopped at the new river bridge look out in West Virginia and kept our hopes and eyes out for Denny's until we finally found one! Starving at this point, it was worth the wait! I got peanut butter pancakes... Only in America right?

Saturday: 

After a mildly uncomfortable sleep we set the road for Florida, and before I knew it was sunny and beautiful! Palm tress lined everywhere and we kept talking about how good a shower was and how our first stop after a shower is divers direct the Walmart size dive shop! 
Turns out divers direct was across the road from our hotel! What are the odds! We went to a dive shop my dad was familiar (conch republic) with and the girl remembered him from years ago! We then ventured on to divers direct... It was massive and I ended up spending way too much and went a little dive crazy ...my treat on dad! I was clearly in a good shopping mood! We got to enjoy the sunset(well I did) and the Beach is literally 12 steps from our hotel! After meeting up with everyone we all went to a cute cafe called "hobo's" (funny name right?) there was nothing hobo-ie about it , the food was delicious and the staff were really friendly! 

Sunday:

Bright and early wake up for our morning dive!  We double dipped the Spiegel Grove!  One of the coolest wrecks around as per Jody and my dad!  I was a little nervous as I have not dove in the ocean in a year and I really hogged my air the first dive!  The wreck was massive and beautiful! I saw goliath groupers, angle fish, parrot fish and much more!  The best part was when Jody let us do swim throughs  in the wreck it was amazing and something I have always wanted to do!  We went to 100ft on a 30 nitrox blend!  I'm also lucky to have a cool dive buddy Alilisair! Today was our groups deep dive and our boat dive for our advanced :) it was a fantastic dive! And I have a new found love for nitrox!  No nap needed after nitrox you feel amazing! 
In the afternoon I went shopping again... No surprise for me and spent more money!  We went to shell world which is like a Walmart size shop full of shells... Why not right? We then hit up the beach bar near our hotel for piña colatas, and to log our dives and watch the sunset! It was a wonderful sunset!   :)  And I may or may not have got tipsy off one drink.... The bartender convinced us to get run floaters he called it...Floating run... He gave us a : "You only live once speech..."  We fell for it!

Monday:

Waking up was a little hard today but my roommate and I (Leighann) managed to get up and still have a half an hour to spare!  I got to breakfast and everyone was asking where my dad was... Turns out his alarm didn't work and I woke him up... Silly dad!  We were all very excited for the dive this morning and we head over to the boat! We double dipped a wreck called the Duane!  It is also an epic ship wreck full of lots of wild life! :) we got some great video footage today so stay tuned for that! :)   The weather was perfectly sunny and both dives were fantastic... As I told Jody today.. They just keep getting better! 
In the afternoon after our dive we went to the historical diving museum which was super interesting!  They had all the ancient antiques all the way back from the 1700's... And did you know that rebreathers came before regulators... Interesting eh? My dads a rebreather and it looks so complex that's why I found that interesting!