The short of this story is that we had
a lot of fun!
We headed out of town for the tour of Texas on Friday
07-June-2002 and arrived at  Whitney Lake Friday evening around 9:00pm.
As always, Whitney proved to have an extremely nice group of people
staying at the Scuba Park campgrounds. While setting up camp several
other campers came over to assist and made us feel right at home.
Saturday morning the dive fest began as we explored the submerged
attractions and cliffs that lie off the shores of The Scuba Park. The
surface temperature was about 80 degrees with a  thermalcline of about 73
degrees. The visibility was down to 6 feet which was lower then the
previous week where divers had 15 feet visibility. We could not seem to
get enough of this Dive area and stayed submerged a good portion of the
day checking everything out. Darrell and Judy Puryear (owners of The
Scuba Park at Whitney) are always great people to be around as those of
you know that have visited the Scuba Park. Thank you Darrell and Judy
for a great time and your hospitality.
 Sunday 09-June-2002 we headed to The Reef Quarry in
Houston with excitement of diving in new waters. The Reef is a spring
fed body of water with a maximum depth of 40 feet that has 24 sunken
boats, 3 busses and several platforms that are conveniently marked
with buoys on the surface. The surface temperature was in the eighty's
and it felt like there were at least two thermalclines before 30 feet
deep and the visibility seemed to deteriorate with depth.  The park was
filled with picnickers and swimmers but very few divers. The entrance
fee was $20.00 per diver which was more then the the swimmers entrance
fee but did not have a separate parking area for divers. If you are at
this area in the near future, be sure to walk out on the docks prior to
gearing up. While we were there, some of the docks seemed to tilt to one
side if two divers with full equipment were on the same side at the same
time.
Sunday evening we headed to Aransas Pass to stay the
night before going to the beach in Port Aransas. We arrived at
Port Aransas Monday morning 10-June-2002 and headed straight to the
Jetties to check out the water conditions. The visibility can change
dramatically from day to day producing 5 to 15 feet and some days the
visibility may seem like zero. Arriving at the Jetties we found large waves coming into shore and a thick layer of seaweed floating at
the surface along the jetties and throughout the water at different
depths which kept us from gearing up, but there is always something to
do at Port Aransas. After aborting the dives we started the journey to
the end of the Jetties to watched the waves crash over
the boulders. Some
areas the walkway had a thin coating of green slime that was slick as
ice which we quickly learned to avoid after doing a little jig trying to
keep our feet underneath us. If we would have had a video camera, we may
have had some new dance moves and had to laugh at each other and our self's
each time it happened. At the end of the jetties there were large
waves crashing onto the block like boulders sending spectacular splashes
into the air which would have made a great place for pick nick lunch.
After we returned to the shore line we headed  down the sandy beach but
it started to rain, so we headed into town for lunch at Virginia's by
the Bay previously known at Tortuga Flats. After the rain passed we
headed back out to the beach and while wading in the water we became
surrounded by 20 to 30 small stingrays swimming to and from shore in
groups of 3 to 10. Hypnotized with the beauty of these gliding
stingrays, we followed them down the beach totally loosing track of time and received a sunburn, but
it was well worth it. Being born
in Corpus and visiting the beach about every year since, I have never
seen anything like this before but hope to encounter these graceful
creatures in the future.
 Tuesday 11-June-2002 we headed 100 miles directly west
of San Antonio to a dive area on the Nueces River called Chalk Bluff.
Park Chalk Bluff is a nice dive site for shallow warm dives with large
boulders, aquatic plants, some submerged fallen trees and an abundance
of fish in the area. Water temperature is generally 80 to 85 degrees F
with an average dive depth of 10 to 15 feet in the river channel. The
depth can vary depending on water levels and the visibility is generally 40
to 60 feet. After a few minutes underwater we located a group of fish
which I swam up to and took pictures of. After the second picture was
taken I realized that I had swam up and put my hand next to large snake
that the fish were schooling around. To make things even better, after I
got the pictures developed two snakes can clearly be seen in the first
picture as I am swimming up on them. The second picture only shows the
one that I had my hand next to, makes you wonder where the other one
was. This is the first time that I have seen a snake in this dive area
and they are only known to be up and down stream, generally keeping
clear of this area due to the commotion of of swimmers that are generally
in the area. Don't let this stop you from enjoying this great dive spot
if you are not fond of snakes because you are not likely to see one in
this dive area.
Wednesday 12-June-2002 we headed to Canyon Lake which
is just north of San Antonio to dive the shores of North Park. The
visibility was less then normal at only 6 to 8 feet. On the dives at
North Park we saw several sunken boats, platforms, cars, motorcycle, a Halloween
type casket and a wet suit that some one had filled with sand or cement.
There is almost always something new to see here.
 Thursday morning 13-June-2002 Geff Willstrop from
Canyon Lake information picked us up at Potters creek campground on his
28 foot sail boat for a little sailing and diving. We started out diving
at party cove to look for sunglasses and stuff that had been dropped the
overboard from boats roped together the weekend before. Upon entry of
the water I tossed my weight integrated BC into the water like normal,
but this time a  valve opened on impact, purged the air out of the BC and
sank down to 41 feet. The BC was quickly recovered, but the jokes
continue. My lesson has been learned, keep your equipment close when
diving in deep or murky water because any thing can happen.
Next we went
over to the island in front of Comal Park. Between the island and shore
the water is shallow but drops off to over 100 feet deep. We dropped  down
to about 71 feet and explored the submerged cliffs, trees and large
rocks. The visibility was spotty, opening up to 15 feet in some areas
then closing up briefly to about 6 feet. This is a nice area to dive if
you are enjoy sheer drop offs, overhangs, and submerged trees. This was
an excellent dive day and I want to send a special thanks to Geff
Willstrop from Canyon Lake Information. If you get a chance check
out his web page at www.canyonlakeinfo.net.
Friday 14-June-2002 we headed to Travis Lake which is
located close to Austin. We stopped at Dive World  to get our tanks
filled which was previously Dive Texas and Aquatic Adventures. After we
got our tanks filled we headed to Mansfied Dam Park to dive close to the
Dam. There was a florescent orange that was stretched from the
shore down into the water. Following this line down we first came to a
training platform, from the training platform there were submerged
traffic signs in front of a large sail boat where the line split in two
different directions. Following the line to the right we came across a
small plane that appeared to be upside down which took a little while to
figure out what it was, past the plain was another platform. Following
the Split to the left from the submerged signs we found large boats, a bicycle,
and a large barge. The florescent line was great for helping find the
underwater attractions and I hope it stays around for a while. The water
visibility at Lake Travis this day was about 15 feet making for great
diving and the dive area is set up for easy compassing
 Saturday 15-June-2002 we headed back to Canyon Lake
for our traditional underwater fish feeding. There were not as many
large catfish as normal but the few that did come along with the flood
of perch kept the dive interesting. We fed the fish at several cars and
the large boat almost finishing up an entire package of hotdogs.
All and All the 2002 Tour of Texas was a lot of fun
with exploration of new and familiar dive areas. We met allot of nice
people and got reacquainted with some old friends and dive buddies. What
could be better then returning home water logged after 8 days of diving
and craving more!
Dive Safe and Have Fun!
Article provided by:
Scuba Adventurer
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