Scuba Diving Vacations

Yep, that's right, today is National Corndog Day. It all started back around the early 90's when a couple drunk basketball fans in Corvallis, Oregon (where I lived the 20 years previous to moving here - I don't know the guys though) realized they were hungry... It sorta took on a life of it's own after that, Google it for more history.

Pat and I are celebrating it by not eating corn dogs, although going down to the Roadhouse Cafe in Kainaliu to see if they have one of their delicious Louisiana hotlink pastry wraps (they bill it as a corndog for adults) sounds tempting.

Yesterday was a fun day of diving. The water was flat in the morning so we headed down south towards the Kealakekua Bay and Red Hill area. We dove "Chimney", which is a cool site with a vertical lava tube that starts at almost 50' of depth and once you are in it goes straight up to to the opening which is just shy of the surface - it's not a site for people with ear or buoyancy issues as you have to get negative and head straight back over the edge and down once you hit the top or you can end up on the rocks. After that we hit a dive site called "Ridges", which neither Bob nor I had ever dove (Cathy mentioned it as a cool dive the other week, so we thought we'd try it) but the group was into exploring it with Bob while I stayed up topside to enjoy the worsening weather conditions. Everyone liked the site for it's topography and reef structure.

The ride home was a wet ride.... a fairly strong northwest wind had come up in the afternoon and the surface chop was a terrific mess. The boat rides much better these days with the extended hull, so the ride was actually fairly smooth but spray tended to blow back at us on occasion... 'time to head to Walmart and look for a bunch of 2 buck ponchos in case we get caught in the weather again. Surprisingly, despite slowing down for the weather, we made it home, in horrible conditions, in about the same time I used to be able to get there at top speed in beautiful conditions before the boat rebuild... we're really pleased with how it turned out.

The nudibranch above is a good sized Pustulose Phyllidia (also know as a Strawberry Nudibranch) that Pat took a photo of the day she borrowed my camera. There were a bunch of them out that particular day and this was probably the best shot.

Don't eat too many corndogs today... save something for Easter tomorrow.

Aloha,

Steve