After Revan and I finished diving at Seabase, we drove up the next day into the mountains to dive at Homestead Crater. It was interesting doing the planning for these two dives, because we had to factor in the elevation of both dives, along with the elevation ascent and descent of the drive into our dive plan. This did limit us to two dives over two days, instead of the three we had wanted to do.Homestead Crater is at 8000 ft elevation, and is part of the Homestead Resort. It is a natural limestone rock "behive" cavern, fed by geothermal springs that deliver HOT water to the cavern. Homestead has built a small dive shop into the cavern entrance.
This was Revan and my first dive in crystal clear water, and our first dive that didn't require wetsuits. It was 36 degrees outside the Crater, and 85 in the water.
We were used to diving with full 7 mil wetsuits and 25-35 lbs of weight. We didn't anticipate how much less weight would be needed with no wetsuits. I don't recall the exact weight Revan used at first, but he almost sunk like a rock! We quickly adjusted our weight, and explored the cavern. It isn't very deep, and there are no fish in the cavern, so it isn't a dive I would do often, but it certainly was a unique experience and one of those "must do at least once" kind of dives.
Dive Proflie