No Adventure Too Ridiculous: Mad Tales from a Lifetime of Travel

By Rusty Hix

Rusty Hix first developed a love of travel and adventure when he accompanied his family across the United States as a young boy. As he matured into a young man, Rusty began traveling internationally to feed his curiosity for understanding the worlds greatest mysteries. From hiking in national parks to caving in foreign countries, Hixs fascinating stories detail unforgettable adventures in Cancun, Costa Rica, Australia, New Zealand, China, Easter Island, Finland, and many other locations.

In sometimes irreverent prose, Hix chronicles his not-so-typical travel tales of helicoptering over the geothermal areas of New Zealand; zip-lining, kayaking, and whitewater rafting in Costa Rica; and visiting pagodas, Buddhist temples, and the Great Wall in China. He also describes many of the wild experiences that include a panda sitting on his lap, vertical caving, sky diving, climbing the worlds highest structure, and a serious car accident that nearly cost him his life. Hix also details the food, customs and behavior of people within a variety of cultures along with vivid descriptions of the scenery where it all takes place.

No Adventure Too Ridiculous is a colorful celebration of one mans escapades as he explores far-flung places on a legendary and sometimes farcical journey around the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Feb 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480841895

Rusty Hix

Rusty Hix has been involved in international sales for the last seventeen years. His travels have included many back road adventures in the United States as well as journeys to over thirty countries for both business and pleasure. Rusty currently resides in Tampa, Florida. No Adventure Too Ridiculous is his first book.

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Copyright © 2017 Rusty Hix.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4187-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4188-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-4189-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017900503

Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/03/2017

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Beginning: Where My Love of Travel and Adventure Got Its Start

Chapter 2 Florida With Foster: Combining Adventure and Decadence.

Chapter 3 Genghis: The Dog from the Dark Side

Chapter 4 Caving: Adventures Underground

Chapter 5 Cancun: Decadence in a Panama Hat

Chapter 6 Towers: Adventures Up High

Chapter 7 Skydiving

Chapter 8 Australia and New Zealand: Adventures Down Under

Chapter 9 Costa Rica

Chapter 10 China: The Great Wall and Bad Manners

Chapter 11 New Orleans: The Worse Trip Ever

Chapter 12 Rebounding: Events and New Meanings

Chapter 13 Chile and Easter Island: Fulfilling a Lifelong Dream

Chapter 14 Estonia: Adventures with Class

Acknowledgments

This book is

dedicated to my parents and grandparents, who have all shown me how travel shines a light on the world.

INTRODUCTION

Floor it and don’t back off until we get to the top! yelled the dune buggy guide sitting in the seat next to me. I responded by stomping the accelerator to the floor. In front of us loomed a 200-foot-high sand dune.

We were in the southern coastal desert of Peru near the town of Paracas. Dale Patterson and I had spent the last couple of days exploring Lima and had driven south to visit the famous rock islands of Islas Ballestas and the Paracas National Reserve, which is considered by many to be the Galapagos of Peru. While I was looking forward to seeing all of the native wildlife in the area, seals and birds were far from my mind as we sped toward the base of the sand dune.

As the moment of launch got closer, Dale shouted encouragement from the back. Well, if you consider Don’t miss a gear, dumbass! encouragement.

A few seconds later the view changed from white sand to blue sky as we rocketed to the top of the dune. I had watched the driver do this maneuver several times before I climbed into the driver’s seat and was confident I could pull it off without killing us.

My adrenaline was in full swing as we closed in on the crest of the dune. I backed off the accelerator as the vehicle hit the top and then, as directed, hit the gas again. I knew what was coming, but it was a whole different feeling now because I was in control of the final outcome. In a split second we were at the top of the dune and I could feel the front wheels lose contact with the sand. The front of the buggy became airborne and then we were headed 200-feet straight down. The rush factor was out of this world! As we sped down the side of the dune, I could feel the back end of the buggy starting to kick around on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the guide reaching for the steering wheel in case I lost control. If the back end swung around much farther, we would start rolling. Briefly, I thought about how much it would suck to roll 150-feet down a sand dune in the middle of the desert, not to mention that I would never hear the end of it from Dale. Fortunately, I was able to maintain control, and we continued straight down to the desert floor and across to the next dune. This was the ultimate theme park.

We were on a week-and-a-half adventure trip to Peru. We spent the rest of the day exploring the national reserve with its vast open landscapes and towering cliffs that overlook the Pacific Ocean.

The following day found us in a small boat on our way to Islas Ballestas. On the way, we passed the incredible El Candelabro de Paracas, aka the Candelabra of the Andes. This geoglyph is nearly 600-foot-high and carved 2 feet deep into the soil of the northern face of the Paracas Peninsula at Pisco Bay. This would be the first of many similar drawings we would see near the city of Nazca, Peru.

Some say that Islas Ballestas has the largest bird colony in the world. One thing that was clear as our boat approached the first of the rock islands was that it was also home to the largest collection of bird shit in the world. The smell was overpowering. You wouldn’t want to be out in here in a rough swell with a hangover lest you end up chucking ceviche and pisco sours.

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Islas Ballestas

A cacophony of sounds reverberated through the air as chattering seals, cormorants, pelicans, and Humboldt penguins went about their business. While this outing didn’t compare to the previous day’s excitement, Islas Ballestas remains a unique area well worth a visit.

Following our boat tour, we ate lunch at one of the many family-owned restaurants on the beach in Paracas. These small restaurants were the best source for local seafood dishes such as ceviche, shrimp and rice. Not far from Paracas is the town of Pisco, which was 85 percent destroyed in an 8.0 magnitude earthquake only two years earlier and killed several hundred people when the local cathedral collapsed during mass. The nearby town of Ica was also heavily hit. Adventure travel does not discriminate against emotions. This town that had been made famous because of its locally produced brandy of the same name was still a wreck. Poverty is rampant in this part of the world and rebuilding efforts had been minimal. To say it was depressing would be an understatement.

The next morning we were back on the road driving through the desert on our way to the city of Nazca to see a sight that had long been on my must-see list. I first read about the Nazca lines during college in a book called Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, by Erich von Däniken. This book proposed that early man was influenced by visitors from another planet. The author refers to a number of historical sites and artifacts to make his point, including the moai of Easter Island, Stonehenge, and an early Egyptian battery, but foremost among them were the desert drawings or geoglyphs of Nazca.

Hundreds of these drawings are spread across the Nazca desert and they have mystified scientists for years. Many of them are over 600 feet wide and they feature a range of styles. Some are simple line drawings, while many others are complex figures of animals. The most famous are figures known as the Monkey, the Hummingbird, and the Astronaut. So what about the Nazca lines suggests the presence of alien visitors? The answer is that they can only be seen from the sky, so therefore the theory is that the Nazca people were instructed to draw these huge figures by people arriving in a spaceship.

I have always been intrigued by the world’s mysteries. Having been fortunate enough to visit Stonehenge as a teenager, I was now out to see one of the more remote and fascinating World Heritage Sites on the planet. The mystery of these lines included not only Why? but also How? Beginning in the 1940’s a German mathematician and archaeologist by the name of Maria Reiche dedicated a good part of her life trying to answer these questions. The house she was based out of north of Nazca is now a museum, so it was only appropriate that we should pay a visit there to learn about what we were seeing. A tour of the museum offers visitors great insight into the commitment demonstrated by Maria Reiche. Over the years she was able to show with much certainty how the Nazca people were able to draw the lines without having a full bird’s-eye view of what they were doing, but neither she nor anyone else has fully proven why they were drawn. Reiche’s greatest accomplishment in the end was bringing the lines to the world’s attention and helping get them protected by working with the government of Peru.

The airport was on the outskirts of town. As we pulled into the parking lot it was obvious that it was a slow day for tourist flights. The airport offered several options for seeing the lines and it didn’t take us long to find a pilot whom we felt could provide a nice tour without his plane falling apart mid-flight.

A few minutes later we were buckled-in and wearing headsets so that we could communicate over the noise of the engines. As we started flying over the lines, I mentioned to the pilot that many of the lines looked like they were runway patterns for some type of aircraft. He replied, I’m glad you picked up on that; not everyone does.

Over the next thirty minutes the pilot banked the plane from side to side so that we could better see the drawings. I was most fascinated by the Astronaut which was on the side of a big hill and was a monstrous drawing of a strange-looking person with what appeared to be a huge head or a helmet, with one arm up as if he was waving. Why would anyone feel compelled to make this kind of effort in the middle of a hot desert? What was going on back then?

After landing, we spent the rest of the day taking in the Nazca Tombs, 15 miles outside of town, as well as exploring ancient wells and aqueducts. The next day would find us on our way to the earthquake-damaged town of Ica, where we would pursue more adrenaline rushes as we rode dune buggies with massive engines that would take us to the top of 1,500-foot sand dunes. More fun was to be had riding straight down the side of the massive dunes lying on greased-up snowboards. Zooming 300 feet down as the sand rushes by inches from your face will wake you up and make you smile. Perhaps you are wondering what kindles the kind of passion for travel and adventure that takes one to the corner of Peru’s deserts to pursue such crazy escapades. Well, let me explain.

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING: WHERE MY LOVE OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE GOT ITS START

Every passion has a beginning. No matter what drives you or excites you, there is usually one event that triggered it. You probably won’t know it at the time and it might be years later before you realize what it was. Every vacation was special, but I finally recognized the one event that made me love travel and adventure.

It was the summer of 1966. My parents had planned a trip across the country in our new Chevrolet Impala. It was not my first vacation, but it was to be the longest and grandest of my short life. For two weeks we would make a huge circle around the United States, taking in some of the best sights our country has to offer. As with any eight-year-old, my anticipation leading up to the trip was immense. I could hardly sleep the last couple of nights before our journey. We departed Nashville in the late afternoon and drove to St. Louis. My dad had decided that we would drive all night and pull over at a rest stop so that we could catch a few hours of sleep. I was lying in the back of the car, supposedly going to sleep while my parents napped up front.

The thought of the adventure that lay ahead was overwhelming to my young brain: Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, and the mother lode of them all, Disneyland. Good grief! How was an eight-year-old supposed to sleep with all this fun and adventure in front of him? My lasting memory of that night is of the sound of cars rushing by on the interstate. Unable to sleep, I just lay there listening and thinking, these cars going by in the night—where are they going? Are their occupants on the adventure of a lifetime as well? To this day, I love the sound of cars on the interstate at night and it always takes me back to that night in St. Louis.

The trip delivered like no other. In South Dakota we saw the Corn Palace, the Badlands, Wall Drug Store, and Mount Rushmore. There were roadside attractions everywhere, including four or five huge, glorious dinosaurs on top of a high hill. Mount Rushmore gave me my first wow moment, that moment when you come around a corner and for the first time see a magnificent edifice you have longed to see. I still live for those moments. They come when you see the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum for the first time. Wow moments can grab your entire being, like when you come through the tunnel at the south entrance to Yosemite National Park and see El Capitan and Half Dome along with the rest of Yosemite Valley. You can’t believe what you are seeing. From Mount Rushmore, it was on to the wonders of Yellowstone. I was intrigued with all the hot springs and geysers in the park, and I am still fascinated by them to this day.

At Yellowstone my twisted sense of humor first reared its head. As we were driving through the park, we saw a few cars pulled over and tourists running around with cameras out. In Yellowstone this means one thing: bears. In this case, two cubs were waddling around and everyone was going mad trying to take their picture.

The family in the car parked in front of us had left their car to check out the cubs, with the exception of a woman in the backseat, who was sticking her head out the window looking at the cubs. All of the car’s windows were rolled down, which was a major mistake for her, but a win for me.

Needless to say, my parents were not letting me out of the car for any reason, which worked out for the best in the long run, as we would have missed the show. While everyone was caught up with the cute little cubs, they forgot about one very important player: Mama Bear. To my delight, Mama Bear came around to the side of the car in front of us while the woman was still hanging out the opposite side to look at the cubs. The woman was so engrossed with the cubs that she didn’t hear their mom approach on the other side of the car. The bear stood up and stuck its head and shoulders in the car. To my mother’s horror and my great amusement, the woman turned around and looked the bear right in the face. You could have heard the woman’s scream in Cleveland. She launched out of that car like a missile.

My squeals of laughter were so long and loud that my parents probably got a good feel for what my adult sense of humor would be like: as twisted as a pretzel. We continued on to Salt Lake City, across the Bonneville Salt Flats, and finally ended up in San Francisco, where we met up with my aunt and uncle. My uncle was in the air force and was stationed in Novato, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Another lasting memory came as we pulled into their driveway and saw my one-year-old cousin Jimmy sitting and eating dirt clods. Even at the young age of eight, I thought that seemed strange. (Fortunately, Jimmy has moved on to more refined cuisine these days.) We had planned this trip so that we would meet up with my maternal grandparents, who were also visiting my aunt and uncle. It was going to be quite the family tour of the Bay Area, and when you have this many relatives in one spot, a disaster is bound to strike, and it did.

San Francisco is known for fine dining and my mother was committed to a night at a great restaurant. Unfortunately, this meant that I would have to wear a coat and tie. And here I thought this was a vacation. Well, off we went to a fancy restaurant that my mother had picked and following a thirty-minute drive, we arrived to find out that no one had bothered to make reservations and the place was booked. This was the start of the great San Francisco dining crisis of 1966.

Having two carloads of relatives, it was hard to get an agreement on the next course of action. The next location evidently didn’t fit the bill for our upscale dress code. Of course, every restaurant in town that actually met our criteria was either booked or involved a very long wait. Patience was in short supply, as my grandfather liked to eat early and was in no mood to wait an hour or more for some fine-dining experience. My mother was determined that we were having a fashionable evening, so went to another restaurant that was also booked and from there to another with the same result. We went from restaurant to restaurant, until eventually it was 10:00 P.M. and the only place we could get in was a small family diner. We sat there in our suits and dresses while everyone else stared and probably thought, "They sure are overdressed"!

The next stop was Los Angeles and Disneyland. My grandmother’s sister lived in LA, so we visited with her, did the whole Hollywood tour, and then it was time for a momentous occasion-A TRIP TO DISNEY!!!!! For an eight-year-old in 1966, there was no destination in the world more coveted than Disneyland. It lived up to all the hype, and it was the kind of day that you never forget as long as you live. We rode all the rides and saw all the shows and while my parent’s favorite was It’s a Small World, I was all about the Haunted House and any type of roller coaster. It was the complete adventure. Amusement parks have been taken to a whole new level and there are multitudes of them in the United States and around the world, but in those years nothing compared to the magic of Disneyland.

Our last stop was the Grand Canyon. It’s a long, desolate drive from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was on the way there, while on a seemingly endless stretch of desert road, that I received a quick lesson in the harsh reality of life and the importance of compassion.

We were behind a station wagon that was pulling a small camping trailer. As we were about to pass, one of the trailer’s tires blew out and the trailer started swerving. They went off the road, the trailer broke loose, and the car ran into a small ditch and flipped a couple of times. It was a shocking sight to see, especially for someone my age. We immediately pulled over and my father jumped out, telling my mother and me to stay in the car.

I could see out the back window as people began crawling out of the car. It was a young family just like us, with a couple of kids and one of them a boy around my age. He was crying and was kind of bloody, but it didn’t look like he was hurt too badly. It was pretty much the same for the rest of the family.

My father helped them to get safely to the side of the road, checked their injuries and then came and got us. What stood out was that the boy had been on vacation just like me and his vacation had just been ruined. As upset as he and the rest of his family were, I distinctly remember him being very grateful that we had helped him. His whole family thanked us repeatedly. It was a good feeling.

The Grand Canyon was almost anticlimactic considering all that we had seen and done so far. We went to one of the better viewing spots and being able to look at something so immensely wide, deep, and long was eye-opening. It was huge and colorful and I envisioned the day that I would come back and explore it the way it needed to be explored.

Two weeks had passed and we had seen a wide variety of sights, but now it was time to head back to Nashville. The drive from the Grand Canyon back to Nashville was fairly uneventful, but I do know that when we got home I was loaded with stories to tell. After all, there are two great parts to travel and adventure: experiencing it and telling your tales.

CHAPTER 2

FLORIDA WITH FOSTER: COMBINING ADVENTURE AND DECADENCE.

When I graduated from college in 1980, I left for one of two trips that year with my friend David Foster. While I had been on many trips since that family vacation in 1966, it was these two trips that would formulate the criteria for many of my future travels. That formula consisted of hard-core adventure, seeing as much as possible, and a first-class ticket on the crazy train.

Foster and I had been friends since the seventh grade. Our families have always been close, having gone to church together for three generations. Some of our first adventures together were typical high school pranks, although we did tend to be extreme––for example, taking my mother’s 1964 Mustang fastback on a motocross track and then having to explain to her why there was grass and mud stuck in the grille. On my seventeenth birthday, my parents gave me a 1972 Mustang Mach I. It was only a few months later when Dave and I decided to upgrade it to an undercover police cruiser by installing a removable blue police light and a spotlight. Our ultimate version of fun involved the newly acquired lights and a fire extinguisher we had borrowed from a local hotel.

We would park with the lights off beside a fairly remote road that was used by some local rednecks for a little speeding. We would wait until a car would come blowing by and then we would pull out with all of our lights on––the headlights, blue light, and spotlight. We knew that when the driver looked in his rearview mirror, all he could see were the lights, with no clue as to what kind of car we were in. We would pull up beside the driver with the spotlight in his face, and our buddy, Eddie Cady, would talk in his deepest voice asking if the driver knew how fast he was going.

Human nature would prevent anyone from even remotely conceiving that this this was a prank. The driver would always be apologetic, and our cop would then inform him that he was going to give him a break. The driver would offer his thanks, and then Eddie would say, You’re welcome and here’s a little water for your trouble. The unsuspecting driver was then blasted by the fire extinguisher and we would take off. I know what you’re thinking: That’s illegal and dangerous [not to mention rude]. No doubt about that, and I wouldn’t encourage anyone to do it today, but for a bunch of seventeen-year-olds, it was the funniest thing we had ever seen. I know we could have been shot or arrested, but teens don’t always think about the consequences, and Foster and I still laugh about some of the victims whom we doused.

Hopefully, this story makes it clear that there was never anything normal or dull when it came to the mischief that Foster and I would consider. David had taken up SCUBA diving when he was quite young, and to his credit became a world-class diver who has traveled the world with many famous divers. He has worked on treasure-diving expeditions salvaging Spanish galleons and started a very successful commercial diving business. Dave’s first foray into the diving business was with a company he started while I was in college called SCUBA Scrubbers. Dave would go to Florida for weeks at a time visiting marinas to offer boat owners his service, which was to clean the undersides of boats in the water while wearing his SCUBA gear. This saved the boat owner the expense of having their boat taken out of the water for cleaning.

Under the pretense of making money, Dave convinced me to go on a couple of long trips to Florida before I actually entered the working world. I wholeheartedly endorse the belief that all college graduates should take an adventure trip before they begin their careers, because for many it may be the last chance they have to do it.

When I think back to these first these two trips, I enjoy the memory of what it felt like to have my whole life in front of me. Having just graduated from Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), I had the feeling that anything was possible. My first trip with Dave lasted a little over a week. Our first stop was Silver Glen Springs, in Florida’s Ocala National Forest. Dave had taken me to both Silver Glen and Alexander Springs one summer during college when we met up in Daytona Beach. He had made friends with some of the people who worked at Silver Glen and we had a grand time there. The water is crystal clear and cold and some of the nearby springs have penetrable caves, which can be very alluring. It was with this in mind that we made our way over to Blue Springs in Orange City, Florida.

Let me be very clear, cave and cavern diving are extremely dangerous and can kill you in a minute if you don’t know what you are doing, and sometimes it can kill you even if you do. Dave already had years of diving experience, but mine was more limited. I had taken SCUBA as a college course and had a YMCA certification. Back then, cave diving certifications were neither readily available nor required for entering underwater caves, but the course I had taken did have some dark water and underwater obstacle training, so as far as we were concerned, we were reasonably prepared for diving Blue Springs.

Blue Springs is a cavern dive, which means you barely get out of the light zone. It is in a state park about 30 miles from Orlando. The park ranger simply asked to see our basic dive certification, checked our gear, and asked us how much diving we had done. This was the first time either of us was vetted for a dive.

To get to the springhead, you have to carry your gear down from the parking lot to a dock that follows the run from the spring. Once in the water, you have to swim the rest of the way to the cavern entrance which is in a circular area at the base of a small hillside. The water is about 3 feet deep for most of the run and deepens slightly as you approach the mouth of the cave. At the entrance you suddenly find yourself looking down 80 feet into a void. It’s spooky, yet exciting. This is a first-magnitude spring, meaning that water is blasting out. Dave and I inflated our buoyancy compensators (BCs) and hovered over the mouth of the cave. Once we both signaled we were ready, we deflated our BCs and started down.

The dive started easily enough, but once we got past the actual entrance into the cave, the force of the water was incredible. Even with weight belts it was hard to descend. We had to grab the walls and pull ourselves down like we were underwater rock climbing in reverse. 80 feet down, the passage changed from straight down to a steep angle. At 120 feet it ended in a small room. We had been warned that the water flow at the bottom was intense and that some divers had panicked and drowned after their masks were knocked off by the force of the current. All of the water blasted out of one small hole in the wall like a fire hydrant. As a way of testing myself, in case my mask got knocked off, I removed it for a moment, then put it back on and cleared it without incident.

Being at the bottom of this deep spring, in such an extreme environment, combined with the realization that people had actually died there was nerve wracking, but yet thrilling at the same time. At that point, this was one of the best adventures of my life and I still look back on it and think about what a terrific day it was.

At the conclusion of our dive, we drove to Orlando to see one of Dave’s friends. Dave has a knack for getting to know people and somehow getting them to invite him into their homes when he is in the area. He has the personality, looks, and charm that people love, especially women. That’s why I call him Friendly Foster. He had convinced his young friend, Debbie, to not only to let us stay at her mom’s house, but also to set me up with one of her friends and then take us to her dad’s river house on the St. Johns River in Deland the next day. Of course, he made sure that her dad’s speedboat was available for our use while we were visiting.

Our night in Orlando was enjoyable and Debbie’s friend was attractive and friendly. As much fun as a longer stay would have been, the next day found us driving to Deland and eventually pulling into the driveway of Debbie’s dad’s house. Her dad, Raymond, was most gracious, and it was quickly apparent that he had been recruited to Team Dave. He was sincerely pleased to see Dave and was a genuine gentleman. He made sure that I felt welcome and gave me a quick tour of the house. We settled in for a bit and then got ready for a boat tour.

Walking down to the dock behind the house, I was pleased to learn that we were about to take off in a hot-looking Pantera speedboat. As we climbed into the boat, I knew this was going to be entertaining. We powered downriver toward Lake George with Debbie at the controls. This is a scenic part of the St. Johns River with plenty of birds and gators along the banks. One of the memorable and more unusual things I saw on the river was a speedboat nested in the treetops along the bank. Debbie explained that about six months earlier some moron was blasting his boat down the river at a high rate of speed, when he hit a large wake from a cruiser at just the right angle to send him airborne. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. The boat was so high up that they couldn’t get it down. Evidently the driver had broken his legs and had to be rescued by helicopter. The boat was trashed enough and in such a remote area that there was no reason to try to get it down, so there it stayed as a memorial to human stupidity.

The river soon ran into Lake George, and I was taken aback by the lake’s vast width and length, as the shorelines on each side were barely visible from the channel. Debbie slowed the boat down and turned into what looked like a creek running into the lake, but was actually the run from Silver Glen Springs. A large number of boats were lined up in the run and Debbie masterfully maneuvered the boat into place and dropped anchor. We spent several hours hanging out and mingling with others in and around the springs. That day cemented my love for Silver Glen and the rest of the central Florida springs and to this day I love taking friends on their first snorkeling trip to the springs.

***

Upon returning to Nashville, I spent the next few months working at a restaurant/ bar that had become a Nashville hot spot. The following spring, I finally committed to a day job, but before I started, I was eager for another trip with Foster. This time I would be gone for three weeks, the longest trip of my life to date.

We borrowed a small boat and trailer from one of our friends’ father. The man was very trusting, but his finals words to us as we pulled out of his driveway with the boat in tow were, Boys, whatever you do, don’t put it in saltwater.

We started our trip with a return to Silver Glen Springs. While we were camping at Silver Glen, we decided to take the boat to Silver River. The Silver River is formed by Silver Springs, which