Dry Tortugas! Again!

Now that the summer season has ended for work, we're in the middle of another Work Week. This means lots of maintenance. It's not very exciting at all. I've been scrubbing the dining hall and taking inventory of the health center. Not too fun. Also, the end of another season means that more people are leaving. There aren't as many people that I'm upset about this time though. Summer is too busy of a season to really get close to anyone new.

One of the people that is abandoning me is Ana. She's been here since January and we worked quite a bit of the summer together. Luckily we got to spend her last day off together. Brynn, Ana and I went to the Dry Tortugas on Sunday. Haven't I been there already, you might be wondering. Yes, I have. It's so gorgeous though, that I needed to go back!

Even waking up at 5:00 am is worth it. Here's Brynn on our way out.

One of the crew members called her Brandy all day. Then I had that song stuck in my head the rest of the time. You know, Brandy, you're a fine girl. Such a good wife you would be. But my life, my love, and my lady is the sea!

Ana had never been to the Dry Tortugas, so she and I went to explore the fort.

 

It was just as cool as it was last time. It's really creepy to think about all the people who have died in there from yellow fever though. I'm sure it's haunted. Plus there's an island right next to it where they used to bury all the dead bodies.

After that, we snorkeled around for a little bit, but it wasn't very clear on the side of the island we went to first. We did see this awesome juvenile Cushion Star though. AKA the Bahama Sea Star. Don't take it out of the water, it's protected! 

After that we went and had some lunch and decided to check out the other side of the island. Right when we were about to go though, a rain storm hit. Brynn thought we should still snorkel, but I thought the wind would demolish us in the waves. Ana agreed, so we all waited it out in the water right in front of the beach.

Obviously, there was no lightning or I wouldn't have been anywhere near the water. Once the storm passed, we went snorkeling and the water was much clearer. I'm still working on figuring out this new camera though, so the pictures aren't amazing. These are just a couple of the fish we saw:

That guy was the biggest hogfish I've ever seen. He was about 2 feet long. I followed him around and almost ran into this other huge fish:

The biggest permit of my life. It was almost 3 feet to the fork. Beautiful!! He seriously, just swam around right by us and let me get really close to him for awhile.

We saw lots of other fish, including a scorpion fish, blue runners and some small mackerals. It was one of the best days of the summer by far. When we got back, we tried to blow conch shells near the dock. I am absolutely terrible at it, but Brynn did great and Ana at least figured it out. All in all, it was an incredible trip.

Snorkeling

People frequently ask me what I do on my days off. "You must get sick of doing stuff in the water," they'll say. False. Maybe during the winter I need some extra motivation to get in the cold ocean on my days off. Maybe sometimes my body needs to recover from being outside in the blazing sun for 10 hours every day. I always love being in the ocean though, and so Thursday on our day off, Leigh, Kerri, Christine and I went to Looe Key. Looe Key is a barrier reef right off of Big Pine Key.

At first we had a little bit of trouble getting the boat ready to go. Here's Leigh paddling us through the harbor when the boat stopped working...

But then things were fixed, and we decided to continue our journey to Looe and hope for the best.

We made it out to the Reef easily after that. We basically jumped in the water immediately once we moored up. We saw some gorgeous and big angel fish. (I'm really bad at taking underwater pictures though. And thanks to Liz for letting us use her camera!)

I think that might have been Cheerio coral in the bottom right hand corner. I just found out that it's not actually a coral. It's a colonial anemone!! Isn't science fun? We saw so much other stuff too. There were schools of yellowtail snappers.

 And several barracuda. This one was just a little guy that was probably about 2 feet.

That's me in my $11 bathing suit... What a steal!

And here's Leigh on her last snorkeling trip to Looe before she leaves me on Sunday after her last day of work.

I'm not sure what I'll do without her. The spring staff that isn't staying for summer camp is leaving Sunday and Monday. It's going to be quite the depressing week around here for me. I'm going to miss most of them quite a lot. If I call you crying soon, don't be too scared. First of all, I'm sick so my nose is stuffy and it sounds like I'm crying pretty much all of the time. Second, nothing is extremely wrong, I'm probably just upset about having to say goodbye to so many people. It's weird living at the place you work because you get much closer to all your co-workers than you ever thought you would be. I'll miss you, Leigh!!!!