Orlando: dives within driving distance?

[jviehe]

Trust me, the only attraction to springs are the somewhat warm and clear water, not much else. Daytona is only 1 1/2 hours away and the diving is much better, sea dogs has a good charter boat there. Also- a little bit further is jupiter, west palm, ft. lauderdale and all those places if you have the time.

Thats because youre not a cave diver.

 

[The Chairman]

Hey guys,

It's ALL good! Whether it's a spring or Ocean dive, it's all good stuff. As for "simple" shore dives, Blue Spring, Alexander Springs combo is awesome. If all you are seeing there are "wet rocks", then you aren't looking. I have found fossil shark and gator teach in Alexander as well as a TON of various fresh water fish, turtles and such.

The oceans are cool too. But the two hour restriction makes it almost imperative that they use a boat. Most of the ocean shore diving within that radius is mostly sand.

 

[kanigel]

When will you be here exactly? We are having a megadive party at Ginnie on the 14th.

Oh, man! That sounds like so much fun. We would have loved to do it, but will be arriving on the 21st of May. *sigh* Also, unfortunately, Ginnie and West Palm, it turns out, are really too far away.

Thank you so much! This is more information, more quickly, than I expected, definitely. This is a great thread; it will certainly cover questions people will have later. Both the fresh and salt dives sound sooo tantalizing--and the Jupiter ledges, and the wrecks, and the BLue Heron Bridge....

Although some of the sites are not within two hours, it's still good to know what is around, because we might, in the forseeable future, want to base a more enjoyable trip out of my Grandmother's house. Unfortunately, she's on chemo right now, so anything too excessive in time expenditure would be undesirable (and probably insensitive).

We are not cave divers, but before this happened we regularly discussed going to Ginny for the cavern course. So, again, we may very well be back.

It sounds like the best bet will be one half-day or so trip to Blue and Alexander Springs, and, if everything is going well, perhaps a splurge on a boat (with Sea Dogs, it sounds like, as the recommendation) dive out of Daytona later. Buuut... is there nothing in Tampa? Or on the Gulf side, per se?

No, we'll have to do the Duvall St. Crawl some other time. Though I do like girly drinks....

 

[Evans]

Thanks everyone for the advise. We did indeed get our hoped for one day to dive and we did the Blue/Alexander pair. Other than getting lost in the car it was fantastic. Neither of us have dove springs before and we both had a blast. The flow coming out of the big hole in the rocks at Alexander was unbelievable. We saw lots of interesting fish, some much bigger than I expected, cute little turtles (and one big one), interesting plants. Some of the alge colors at Alexander at one of the outflow vents was just amazing. Like an undulating stained glass window. I was very surprised at how much there was to see.

But then again, I pretty much like any dive. I'm kind of a dive 'ho, really. Anyway, thanks again, and thank you, Florida. Hope to come back some day to do a cavern/intro course.