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Last weekend, we were in Morehead City, NC for some diving. Well, at least I was going to dive. Mica has decided it’s not really her thing. Definitely a good thing last weekend, the diving was far from easy.

It was quite the trip. We flew into Raleigh-Durham and drove the 3 hours out to Morehead City, stopping for lunch at a very sub-par Taco Bell (and that’s a scary thought, right there). We get into the hotel and Mica decides to take a shower. In the middle of drying her hair, she gets nauseous and dizzy and runs to bed, only to get right back up and make a break for the bathroom. 15 minutes later, she’s on the verge of passing out and I call 911. 4 hours in the ER and they think between having her head between her knees drying her hair, dehydration from the plane and stress from school, she had a temporary loss of blood pressure. Nothing major, they let us out and we meet our friend tk at the hotel for dinner.

This is our first time meeting tk in person. She plays an online game that we do and when I’d mentioned something about going to Pax River for a business trip, she said she lived there. Her husband is in the Navy and flies out at the Naval base there. This was long before we had plans to move to Pax. Well as Boeing has started making plans for me to move, Mica and I have talked more and more to tk about the area. Doesn’t hurt that we have a lot of mutual interests with her and her husband, including travelling and diving.

So anyway, we met, had a nice dinner but we’re very surpised that there’s not a lot of food available in the area. Kind of strange for a tourist area, I think. Anyway, we found a great seefood place on the water, so that was at least good. Mica just had rice, since she still wasn’t feeling well.

On the way into town, we’d run into some short, but heavy storms. They came back that evening. We had almost 10 hours of continuous heavy thunderstorms that shook our hotel room and kept the room almost contantly illuminated with lightning. They said they had sustained winds on the water of almost 70mph for most of the night.

So we’re up and out at 6AM to meet the dive boat. The winds had churned up the visiblity and there were 10′ swells on the water, so there’d be no diving until things calmed down. They told us to come back at 9. We go back to the hotel, have breakfast and return to the boat at 9, when they recommend going to the aquarium and meeting back at 2PM.

So we hit the aquarium instead. It had just reopened that week after a $24mil renovation that had shuttered it for a few years so it was a bit crowded. We got a nice parking spot, but by the time we’d left, the parking was almost a mile out on the street leading in. The aquarium was very, very nice though, and about the only touristy thing to do there besides being on a boat. Three of their largest exhibits included parts or replicas of local shipwrecks, incluiding the Caribsea which we actually got to dive.

That afternoon, we did make it out on the water, and did a dive on the Indra. The storms had the water so churned though, the swells at the bottom were nasty and the visibility was no more than 7′. So we couldn’t see a whole lot, but we did swim around the entire ship. Only one dive Saturday, and it’s probably for the best.

Sunday, we did get out at 6AM. The first dive was the Caribsea, which we had seen part of at the Aquarium. The visibility was great and there were a couple of 4-6′ sandtiger sharks, a gorgeous baracuda as well as a nice sized school of jacks. Definitely the best wreck dive I’ve done. The last wreck, the Verbena, was horribly silted and we had less than 4′ visibility (couldn’t see your own fins) so there wasn’t a lot to say there.

Overall though, the trip was nice. It was great to meet tk, and the weather was perfect outside the storm the first night. Not a place we’ll probably go back to, but it was a nice break.

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