Work has been getting in the way of enjoying Koru. We went camping at Pottawatomie County State Lake #2 (Pott #2) which is about 30 mins drive from home for a weekend. It is easy to take all these things for granted, and forget that there are beautiful camping spots within an hour from home! However, Hannah and I are itching about doing a longer trip with Koru.
Along came the opportunity! We had planned to go cave diving in Florida AGAIN, and we decided to camp with Koru along the way, rather than staying in AirBnBs. After all, this is one of the reason for buying a teardrop, so that we do not need to spend tons of money on way-to-expensive AirBnBs. So we loaded up Koru with all the essentials (it took us so much shorter time than loading up the car with cooler, food and drinks, and all the dog and diving essentials), and we were on the road!
Camping in Koru is VERY NICE! After the challenge of backing Koru into the camping site (which I am getting better at after each try), we set up the kitchen, make a little supper and we can just relax and enjoy the nature. And when the night comes, we make the bed in seconds, and we are in bed. It is absolutely great to be lying in bed, with the heat on (when it is cold outside), and watching the stars as we dozed off into dreamland. A plus was Hannah's glowing nails in the pitch dark camping site 😍. Note to self - we need a have some sort of app where we can have records of where we camped and our reviews - because I cannot remember any of these when it is time to write the blog!
Although camping with Koru on the way to and from Florida was a blast, cave diving was not really too successful on this trip. Hannah was experiencing ear equalizing issues on our first dive, and had to call the dive early. She was experiencing a bit of vertigo, and it wasn't any fun for her. However, the fun thing that came out from the dive was that we had our first sighting of the otters at Peacock Spring!!!
Site: Peacock Olsen Sink
Duration: 52 mins
Max depth: 20.4 m
After the first dive, Rye started to feel sick - he wasn't eating and was throwing up his food. So between Hannah's ear, Rye's tummy and also (probably) my laziness, we didn't dive for the next 3 days. During the 3 days, we just relaxed, enjoy the company of friends and ate oysters!
Finally, everyone felt better on the forth day, and we decided to do a long, staged dive at Madison Blue! It was not exactly swimming weather (it was cold), so other than a few swimmers, we had the whole place (including the Madison Blue Cave) to ourselves. It was a long dive, which lasted almost 2 hours. Instead of going through the main lane to the sign board, we went through the "rabbit hole", and hopped over to the main line at the sign board. The amount of gear is getting bit much and heavy - there's double 104s tanks on our back, a AL80 tank on our side, lights, regulators, and there isn't much "estate" on our (especially Hannah's) torso. It was a nice long dive, and at the end of the dive, both Hannah and I were exhausted... hmmm... maybe, time to explore using DPV for longer dives in the future 😃
Site: Madison Blue Main Line
Duration: 117 mins
Max depth: 24.0 m
