**for all thumbprint photo's on this page, click on it for a larger view**
**then use your browsers "back" button to come back to the scuba page**

Ok, this is our trip to Blue Lake. It is located about 1/2 hour away from Wendover Nevada. Ok, there are a few of you out there scratching your heads saying, "where would you dive in Wendover area? It's a DESERT there!!"

Let me tell you - there is a little known (and I stress the word little!) fresh (?) water hot spring there. It is about the size of a football field and all of 54 foot deep at best, but it is very interesting... you see, "hot spring" makes for a good dive. Its warm water and that, as any diver knows, is a definite plus. The water is a balmy 70 degrees at the surface and somewhere in the 80's in the springs... I heard an "in the springs??" out there.

Well, picture this:

You leap into the lake and start to descend. There is nothing around you but silt (or some sort of algae that you don't want to imagine). You can't see the bottom, you sure can't see the top...there is a well filtered light above your head letting you know that there is a world above you. You finally find bottom (whew) and it's rather gross...there are bushes here - aquatic bushes of some sort with multiple snails on them. These snails are having a hay day with all the algae/silt that has settled from the water onto the branch they are slimily their way over.... You keep looking around and out of the haze, you see....a BODY??? What??? Oh, it's a mannequin that some "funny" guy has placed here...and it's resting in a boat that sits on the bottom covered in silt. Further investigation reveals that the sand on the bottom is BOILING? Look again...is it possible to have rapture of the deep at only 30 foot???

Yes, folks, the sand here is course and the springs are weak. The whole bottom of this "lake" is pocked with springs that roll the sand as if a boiling pot of chocolate. It was the wildest thing that I have ever seen! I wish that we had an underwater camera to capture this, but I have a feeling that it just wouldn't do the whole experience justice...

We spent 45 minutes playing in the warm sand - putting out hands down into the sand to feel the vibrations of the earth as the warm water pushed past the grains of sand into the lake

So, with this in mind - here a few photo's of the divers and the area:

Getting ready for the long walk out....

This is Butch with his friend Dale getting ready to jump into the lake

***The following pictures don't have links***What's this? This is the flat tire after the MAJOR snaffo that caused our second drive to the lake in one day - to retrieve keys. THEN having a flat half way back to the paved road.

Yep, you guessed it, someone came by to offer help right as we completed the job of changing the tire...