Thursday, November 24 (Happy Thanksgiving!) - Ginnie Springs, Devil's Eye, Devil's Ear
After a short three hour drive, we found ourselves at Ginnie Springs.  At 9:00 a.m. it was already in the 60s and the water was (as always) a brisk 72.  We did two cavern dives in Ginnie, a cavern dive in Devil's Eye and an "extended" cavern dive in Devil's Ear.  After four dives, we checked into our hotel and set out to find something other than KFC and Waffle House for Thanksgiving dinner.  Just a short drive into Gainesville landed us at a neat little place in downtown for a great turkey meal. 

Friday, November 25 - Catfish Hotel, Manatee Springs
We got up early to ensure we were in Chiefland when the park opened at 8:00 a.m.  We met two cave divers in the parking lot and talked to them quite a bit about their gear, local diving and more.  We ventured into Catfish Hotel first, a green covered sink hole, and explored the cavern.  There are three different cave entrances from the cavern.  Peeking into each, we found siphon in one was strong - it felt as if you were being sucked in.  For the next dive, we walked over to Manatee Springs where we found the outflow from the siphon.  According to the local divers,  as a certified cave diver you can dive from the siphon in Catfish Hotel to the outflow in Manatee Springs.  The coolest part about the outflow was how strong it was.  We tried to swim into it, but kept getting pushed back out. 

Saturday, November 26 - Paradise Springs
Paradise Springs was a great experience.  We drove southeast from Alachua and found ourselves in Ocala.  Down a dirt road, across a railroad track (that had no gates, no bells, and a street sign with a cross street on it) and down another dirt road...where we found a man's house with a sign that said Paradise Springs.  He opened his garage door for us, showed us a home video of the springs, collected our $60 and told us to enjoy.  The spring was a sink hole in his backyard complete with fossilized whale bones and sand dollars.  The first dive was awesome - we were the only two in the water and it was crystal clear.  As we were getting out, 10 people (most of them either new divers or soon to be certified) hopped in.  Needless to say the vis on the second dive wasn't as good, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Sunday, November 27 - Peacock I, The Orange Grove
Peacock was awesome!  We knew we would be doing one of our checkout dives for out Intro to Cave class here so we thought we'd check it out.  The first two divers in the water, we decided to do an "extended" cavern dive.  We ended up about 500 feet into the cave before turning the dive (we were diving air and didn't want to run out of bottom time).  By the time we got out of the water, there had to be about 30 divers all suiting up.  If we learned nothing else this weekend, we definitely learned that arriving as soon as the parks open is absolutely the way to go.  After our surface interval, we made our way over to the Orange Grove for our last dive of the trip.