It was a dark and stormy…

Oh wait – wrong story.

The scuba diving pumpkin-carving day dawned with the mercury soaring to a height of 36-degrees. A thermometer level made even the die-hardest of divers wonder about the sanity of making the trek to New Paris, Ohio’s Natural Springs Resort.

But trek they did.

Divers started filtering through the front gate around – oh, I don’t know the time. I wasn’t the first to show up, but I did arrive around 10:30 AM.

Don and I decided to make an early dive. While we geared up Ray pulled in, and decided to join us.

We started our descent around 11:15, and followed the guide rope toward the south side of the quarry.

Finning over the runabout, and big screen TV, we headed across the quarry, coming next to the near (to the dock) training platform. Leaving the platform we continued our journey toward the trench.

At near three fourths of the way across Don signaled low air, and headed back to the entry point. He started the dive with less than half-a-tank, and we knew going in that he’d leave us early.

Ray and I continued our exploration coming next on a ski boat perched on the wall overlooking the trench.

Dropping into the trench we finned around another training platform, then back out of the “deep” water to fin past some camp chairs, and an upside down lawn umbrella. Just beyond this “campsite” we happened on an 18-inch walleye lying on the bottom. He looked like he was napping.

The next attraction to greet us was a 1960s era Ford or Mercury. This is such an old resident of the quarry that the roof rusted through. And it collapsed into the car’s interior apparently some time ago.

We left the car, found a computer station just waiting for someone to put its keyboard to use.

Leaving the computer we next arrived back at the first training platform.

We’d gone full circle, and had a great dive. Visibility was 15-feet, and the water temperature was 57-degrees.

At 1:00 PM we headed back to the water again. This time we had a group of five divers with big orange gourds in tow. It was time for our underwater scuba diving pumpkin carving event.

A few minutes of carving activity lowered the visibility to much less than 15-feet. The divers who did the carving quickly stirred the sediment up from the bottom. Watching a diver struggle to hold a very buoyant pumpkin still while carving a Halloween scary face in it is a treat all to itself.

Afterwards some of the campground kids came around, and helped us vote for the best pumpkin. We enjoyed a pitch-in meal, and talked scuba.

And everybody had a great time at this scuba diving pumpkin-carving event.