Sharks!

One of the best dives of the Turks and Caicos trip was on the afternoon of third day at a site called "Rock Garden Interlude".

We'd seen shark activity on previous days, but it was on the third day that we found ourselves surrounded by them. The photos above were all taken within minutes of each other. An occasional shark sighting became more frequent, we saw two, three, or more at time. It became obvious that they were circling us and the reef.

We stopped at a sandy patch near the top of the reef and stared in awe as the sharks glided past with slow and powerful flexing of their fins. One from the left, one from the right, and then movement out of the corner of our eye. With our hearts beating loud in our chests we couldn't stop taking photos and movies of the action.

Feeling like a temporary guest in their environment, and with feeding time approaching, we surfaced towards the boat.

This was one of the best dives of the trip.

The Thunderdome

The Thunderdome was one of the first dives we did during our Turks and Caicos trip and is worth a mention. The structure was originally built in the early 90's for the "Survivor" style French TV show "Le Tresor de Pago Pago".

Contestants had to dive into the dome and collect "pearls" while holding their breath before getting air from a mermaid. You can find clips from the original show online.

Apparently the show didn't last long after some contestants developed lung injuries when surfacing after breathing compressed air at depth. For non-divers: compressed air expands as the surrounding water pressure is reduced.

After suffering hurricane damage, the remains of the structure now lie on the bottom of the ocean at a depth of about 30 feet making an interesting dive site and home to lots of sea-life.

2009 Dive Trip

Erin and I were recently lucky enough to spend a week aboard the Turks and Caicos Explorer II dive boat. It was a successful trip packed with 24 dives and numerous sea creature encounters. We're still swaying backwards and forwards and trying to adjust to life back on solid ground.

We're rinsing our dive gear and starting the process of sorting through almost 1000 photos, amalgamating dive data, and plotting GPS locations.

More details to come.

New Mantel

After living in the house for a year, we decided it was finally time to install a mantel in the living room. The fireplace had been built with a marble surround, but no mantel.

We thought it would be really fun to build a mantel using an oak tree that fell down over the summer. Unfortunately, we don't currently have access to the tools needed to turn a massive log into a handcrafted piece of art, so we went to out local fireplace shop, selected a mantel, and placed our order. About two weeks later, the mantel arrived and the installation process began.

Dan handled the installation, I did the painting,
and voila a beautiful new mantel!

Chopping Wood

We had a guest join us on the ranch a couple of weeks ago and we quickly put him to work chopping some wood.

We now have enough wood to keep us going for a while (probably several years at the rate we burn it). But don't worry - there's still plenty left to chop for the next visitors.