For the second portion of the “sleep-away” half of the internship, I will be staying with Jim and Pat Stayer, a couple interested in wreck diving and exploration. They are the founders of Out of the Blue Productions and charter dives on their boat, Wildkat. Jim and Pat have discovered eight shipwrecks in Lake Huron, and I will get the chance to dive on some wrecks in the Sanilac Shores Underwater Preserve. I met the Stayers this morning at a coffee shop in Connecticut, and we packed away my luggage and dive gear so that we could start the 12 hour drive to their home in Lexington, Michigan.
A couple of days ago the Stayers had told me that we might have the chance to stop in Canada on the way back, and we did! This is my first time visiting Canada, and we stopped at NIAGARA FALLS. It was so cool, they are magnificent. Getting up close to the ledge, you realize the power of water, seeing the huge rapids and the sheer volume of water passing right by you is amazing. The Stayers are going to teach me how to put together a short video, which will be documenting the summer, so Pat took a few video clips of my first time in Canada. With our break at the Falls, the 12 hour trip actually turned into a 15 hour trip; the traffic jam we sat in trying to cross the American border reminded me of all the traffic I was missing back in Boston during today’s Democratic National Convention.
We reached the Stayers’ home by 10:30 and after unpacking the truck we are all ready to sleep. Before I went to bed, though, I noticed beautiful and intricately drawn pictures of shipwrecks hanging in the hallway; Jim told me that these were some of the ones that we would be visiting and mentioned that Pat had drawn them all. In amazement I went to bed dreaming of what it would be like to dive on one of these vessels…