nathan's fun

Most of you know that we lived in Florida for a year while Nathan went to flight school. While we were there, he took up a new hobby ... scuba diving.

The picture to the right is of Bradley Gann and Nathan scuba diving at Crystal River in Florida.

Another place they went scuba diving a lot was a place called Blue Spring. The dark line in the middle of the picture on the right, is the opening to a 120 ft deep cavern the 72 degree water flows out of. During the winter, manatees swim up the St. Johns River and spend the winter in the warm water from this spring. Swimmers can get in this river and swim all the way up to this cavern. Sometimes, while swimming, the manatees would actually swim up next to you. Manatees are an endangered species, so the park rangers didn't care for this very much.

Once, Nathan convinced me to put a snorkle on and get into the water. The water is so clear that you can see everything floating in the water and everything that is on the bottom of the river. You could also see very clearly the manatees swimming only feet from you. Although they are very docile animals, this was a little unnerving to me and I decided to get out of the water. Not to mention that lying on the bank of the other side of the river was an alligator.