Last years Early Thanksgiving 2011 was a blast. This year Kelly was hosting it. We were there to help, but to make it more of a challenge we all booked ourselves into the San Diego Color Run Team urbanRenewal 2012 Color Run in the morning. We got home around noon looking like kaleidoscopes and scrambled to get things ready for guests arriving at 3 and dinner beginning about 4:30.
As the host we made the Turkey, stuffing, gravy and a Ham. Everyone else brought a side dish or dessert. It all came together perfectly and we even managed to clean up pretty well.

Well into the evening, after multiple rounds of food and dessert and well fortified with various beverages the rented Karaoke machine came out. Early Thanksgiving finished with a great party (even if the roller skates didn’t make an appearance . There is video from just before closing time but it will remain locked up ( until I need it as leverage

Great time, awesome people and we’re already looking forward to next year. But first, we double the holiday joy with Melissa and Dallas coming here to the Keys for the regular Thanksgiving next week. Life is sweet.

View from the Mountain Road

This particular patch of desert is home to Anza-Borrego State Park.

The park itself is typical desert, sand, scorpions, snakes and everything that grows there has spikes, burrs or thorns. Just walking on the trails without drawing blood is an adventure. What makes this place different from any other desert patch is the metal sculptures that adorn the desert along the roads in Borrego Springs.

According to the history, this area was once high plains and home to Mastodons, Saber tooth Tigers, Giant Zebras and other early mammals. These animals are commemorated in huge life-size-for-the-time-period steel sculptures, spread out across the desert around the state park.

We took the rental Impala off-roading (sorry Avis) across some of the desert tracks to get photos of the sculptures. The pictures don’t capture the feeling of looking out across the desert and seeing what looks like a life size elephant standing there but here are a few photos of the sculptures. There are tons more but…..

If nothing else, the ride down into and back out of the desert is some of the most spectacular road I have ever been on. Switchbacks with sheer drops and 300 degree views one after another. A great day in Southern California.

Patrick stayed behind with Jessie while William and I headed out for a couple of hours of ‘fun fishing’ before they had to leave for home. Lines went in just past the sea buoy and the fish started coming over the side. We had non-stop catching with snappers of every kind (Mutton, Mangrove, Lane and YellowTails)

along with Grunts making an appearance.

Everything was released unharmed except for one fish that became food for a Frigate bird 10 feet from the boat. William set a boat record for the number of fish caught on one piece of bait (14 I think) and even had a double when a small hooked YellowTail wrapped the leader around and lassoed a bigger Grunt that came in with it.

Great time with the “boys”. Saved by a “plan B”.

We certainly were not going to go that way so we trolled towards shore and away from it, using the radar to watch it’s movement as it moved slowly North East. We finally made it inside the rain band about 5 miles east of where we wanted to be but managed to stay mostly dry.

It’s always interesting out on the water.

I was getting ready to beat feet away but then, just a few minutes later it turned into this.

I was glad I wasn’t down cloud in that black section!

It’s just another thing that makes it fun to live here.

Ok. No big deal. We see “drop downs” from time to time so I went back into the house to get the rest of my stuff, come back out and now it looks like this:

The goodness is that before I even got going it petered out and became just another cool thing we see from time to time.

The Wall is a nickname for the continental shelf and lies about 25 miles south of our dock. The water at the wall is about 900 feet deep and then drops off rapidly to thousands of feet as you continue south into the Florida Straights.

We pulled in our spread and headed out and set up on scattered lines and large rafts of weeds. It did not take long before we had our first Mahi in the box. It was a single so we continued to troll and shortly another fish hit a short bait and a small school followed it in. I grabbed the spinning rods and pitched a bait out into the school and instant hookup. Handed the rod to Lesa, baited and pitched another bait out and another hook up! Handed that one to Lesa also and told her to hang on to them while I got Jeff’s fish in the boat.

So there is Lesa, a rod attached to a jumping fighting dolphin in each hand and a big smile on her face! She now has her first and second offshore fish in one shot.

We put a few in the box from that school, let a few really small ones go and moved on when the school disappeared. We continued to troll around all the action seemed to have stopped for a while. Then we trolled past a large raft of weeds and could see Dolphin swimming out to our baits but not biting. We stopped, brought in the trolling gear, grabbed the pitch rods and backed the boat up near the weed raft. We pitched a few baits near the edge of the weeds, the Mahi came swarming out and it was game on again. These were all small fish but we had a great time with catch and release managing to keep one or two more for transport back to Wisconsin.

Time to go with a 26 mile run back in. Now you might be expecting the standard “holding the fish” photo but no, not this time. Since they were leaving the next day for home we filleted the fish, were getting ready to vacuum bag it and she said this was the picture she wanted, Lesa with her fillets..

I decided it was time to refresh and improved my Scuba skills and get some advanced ratings. I signed up for the progression of courses that lead to a Dive Master rating. Where I live many will tell you that there is only one person to train with, Janis (JB) at Underseas in Big Pine Key. I called and scheduled the first course (Advanced) and found out that I would be taking it with Alyssa, a diver who was coming from NJ to take the course with JB.

The first exercise was some pool work to go over the skills that may be needed in an emergency. Swapping regulators underwater, responding to “out of air” conditions with another diver, mask falling off, etc. We also covered some rescue skills. All stuff that you hope wont be needed but when it is…

Then it was off to the Looe Key Marine Sanctuary for open water work. Navigation, buoyancy work, weight systems, identifying fish and corals and underwater photography were on the agenda. All fun stuff but with practical application and underwater confidence building. We did five dives on the reef over two days getting ready for our deep dive.

Bright and early on the 9th (8 am) we arrived at Dive Key West for our ride out to the Cayman Salvor, a shipwreck located off Key West in 90 feet of water. Alyssa and I were a little nervous at the thought of going that deep and all that water overhead but excited at the same time to experience it. JB had gone over what she expected of us by way of skill demonstrations on the way down, at the bottom and on the way back up. After a dive briefing by the Divemaster on the boat the three of us got wet and started down.

The visibility was about 30 to 40 feet so at the start we couldn’t see the wreck but as we descended there it was! A quick look at out depth gauges and we realized we were already down about 60 feet! A few minutes later we touched down on the sand along side the ship, placed our gauges on the bottom and high-fived the Nine-Oh reading. We had made it down! Now all that was left was to enjoy exploring the wreck for a while and safely return to the surface. Obviously, since I am writing this, we made it, did all our skill requirements well and graduated to Advanced Diver status.

We did a second dive on a reef off Key West on the way back in where JB left us to explore on our own and try and settle which one of us would be “In Charge” of the dive. Who was leading kept changing back and forth. Alyssa definitely likes to be in charge. Sometimes. Then just a quick hands it back!

It was a great three days. Alyssa was a fun and responsible dive buddy and I would dive with her again anytime. Here are a few photos from her camera.

Corals on the reef

Black Grouper on Brain Coral “cleaning station” (note the Blue Tangs eating the parasites off the Grouper.

Turtle (Hawksbill I believe)

We went diving where Vicky demonstrated her prowess at pointing out lobsters hiding in the coral recesses. Another dive on the reef where it’s like swimming in an aquarium and, of course, some fishing.

We trolled offshore without much success and stopped at the reef on the way back in. Bingo, it was game on with Yellowtails. We didnt catch bunch but what we caught was quality. Vicky had the largest

which ended up cooked whole on the grill with an orange juice reduction as a marinade.

Great visit, great fun, come back soon Vicky !