Underwater Pumpkin Carving – It’s a Thang!
Wow, today got away from me. I spent most of my day learning about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Quite an interesting story, not gonna lie! What’s even more interesting is people don’t want it taught in schools because of some of the language. It is considered racist… written by a guy who was pretty much anti-slavery. Interesting in deed!
Anyway last weekend was the annual Underwater Pumpkin Carving. Since getting certified in 2013, hubby has participated and Tbug has participated but I never had. Writing a scuba blog I figured it was about time that I try too, right? Only fair!
I was a bit nervous about the water temperature since the morning started out in the upper 40’s… but I thought, what the heck. I still think I want to do a New Year’s Day dive just once too. I couldn’t the first year we were certified because they don’t let you dive while pregnant and the second year I chickened out. Maybe this is the year, but enough on that… we’re talking about carving pumpkins underwater!
We beat Deb and Grady there. When we left the house I asked hubs why so early. He told me that this is one of those moments you say yes hunny and just go with it. I said whatever and went to sleep in the front seat of the car. :).
When Deb and Grady got there we started helping them unload the truck/trailer. That’s when they realized they forgot some things. I asked what they needed, got the list and Memaw, Abug and I headed back to Seligman to the new Walmart store. So nice that it is so close, but I’d have gone farther if needed.
When we got back, Grady and Dan were gearing up with their dive students to go out and certify some new divers.
Deb stayed on land to get food ready and get paperwork done for the underwater pumpkin carving. On the menu, Chili, Spaghetti Red, Hot dogs. Karen and I took care of stirring the chili, making the noodles, etc, anything that involved the food so that Deb was free for paperwork. We had 2 gals that were from out of state, Alaska and California. They’d never heard of Spaghetti Red and said it must be a Midwest thing. By the way if you haven’t heard of that… it’s chili on spaghetti noodles.
The water has gone down some since all the rains this summer (not complaining) but it is still rather on the high side. We didn’t get to go to the normal dive side, we went off by where the camping area is. Grady also told me that there wasn’t a thermocline in the top 30 feet which is a good thing. I know my dive computer said 68 degrees when we started diving. It really wasn’t that bad. I know, right?!?!
Once Grady and Dan were done certifying students, they came up and got dressed in regular street clothes. Don’t you just love their dive socks?
All morning I walked around and people asked if I was going to carve a pumpkin. I kept responding with Hubby says I am. LOL. Dan and Tiffany went and camped elsewhere (our normal site is closed for the year). They had their camper on behind the truck so I went and changed in their camper. I forgot to take my dive boots up with me so I was walking around in my regular boots. I got a lot of funny looks, laughs, and head turns :). Whatever, I’m a country girl, it’s all good.
Now I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to get a pumpkin underwater, it’s not easy. They are extremely buoyant. Boomer thought he’d put his in a mesh bag with they said about 40lb of rocks. Didn’t work. His pumpkin came out of the bag and I hear it was a riot to watch from land.
I lucked out because they over weighted me so I could get my pumpkin down but it kept floating me to the surface so hubby had to take it down for me. I put it against my chest so that my over weight would take it down. No such luck. Hubby got it down for me though. Then he held it while I cut it open. Once the top came off we weighted it down with water and rocks. While I was carving I broke 2 knives. luckily we took 4 down with us. (You’ll know me underwater by my yellow sleeves although in the green murky water they don’t quite look yellow)
The joke back up on surface was that now that we’ve carved pumpkins we have to go get all the insides and get them out of the water. Yeah right, good luck with that!
Abug played soooooo hard up on surface. Memaw followed her around checking everything out and picking up acorns. She soooooooo wanted to get in the water and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to. Memaw couldn’t get her to sleep so finally Karen took her and walked away from the crowd and she went to sleep fairly quickly.
While Karen was putting her to sleep, I went and used their truck and a blanket to change back into my street clothes. Then we had to vote for whose pumpkin should win. This time I left my boots down with everyone else so I got to walk across the campsite area barefoot. Man I never had the right shoes at the right place.
So Mike won for Ugliest Pumpkin
Annie won for Best Effort
Tiffany was 3rd. And the blogger was fired for this out of focus picture.
Justin was 2nd.
And Dan was 1st.
Mine is pumpkin #2 (third on the top row)
and our 3rd, 2nd and 1st place winners. Dan and Tiffany are married so Justin wound up in a family sandwich :). haha.
Let me tell you, this wasn’t bad. Water was great, visibility was great. And it was a lot of fun! Back on land, my pumpkin lasted one day. There’s something about that lake water that ruins them. oh well… such is life I guess.