It's about a 2.5 hour drive north-west from High
Springs to Marianna, and you change a time zone into Central Time, so we
gained an hour, nice :) We headed straight for Cave Adventurers so that we
could find out anything we needed to know about the DPV
course, and check in to dive Jackson Blue that afternoon. Kev also
wanted to find out if they had any stock of Minnus Scooters to buy. As luck
would have it (maybe not for the cash balance, but definitely for the
happy-factor), they had one Minnus and one Minnus 1.5 in stock. We bought them
on the spot :)
The Minnus underwater DPVs |
Then we headed to Blue Hole Springs Park,
which is the recreational park around the opening
of Jackson Blue Spring. Jackson Blue is the most commonly dived cave in the
area, partially because you don't need a boat to
access the entrance, and partly because the system is so large and the main
passages are high and wide and forgiving. There is also quite a bit of
flow, so although there is silt, it disperses quite quickly. The
underwater system is massive, and the maps say it stretches 11,000 feet which
is about 3.3km, and there are about 16,000' (4.8km)
of mapped passages.
The map I have below only shows 4,000' (1.2km), which is plenty enough for Kev
and me, at Komati Springs I think our max distance penetration was about
200-300m. But in Jackson Blue the max depth is about 30m, so at least
there is no real decompression to worry about.
The Blue Hole Springs Park is a beautiful
park at the top of Merrit's Mill Pond. It has a wooden platform that separates
the spring (and swimming area) from the swampy pond. There are bathrooms and
lots of pavilions with picnic tables. During the day it fills up with families
and children swimming and playing in the spring. The entrance to the cave is
right underneath a diving board, so divers go underneath where kids are jumping
in above.
Blue Hole Springs Park with barrier to Mill Pond |
Blue Hole Springs Park with Diving Board |
No comments:
Post a Comment