diving West Texas?

When you mention places to go diving for most people West Texas just would not come to mind.  However, we just got back from this little known State Park, went there with our dive club. It is literally, out in the middle of "nowhere West Texas", but it was one of the nicest diving spots I have been to in Texas.  It consist of a man made pool, built during the depression era, that is fed by the San Solomon Springs.  The water temp is a constant 72-76 degrees year round.  This reflects the constant underground temperature through which the water is flowing.  Now for just plain swimming the water is a bit too chilly for me, my girls however just loved it they swam, snorkled, and dove off the trampoline all day.

  It's amazing how resilliant kids can be!  I did not swim I just partook in the diving, we got there on a Friday night around 10pm, the park is ungated so it is open all night, you do however have to make your reservations beforehand.  Saturday morning about 10am we did our first dive for 45minutes.  Now it's only 20 feet deep, at the deepest end so you could literally dive forever on one tank!  45 minutes is just when the chill factor started setting in for me.  The pool was amazingly clear and full of different kinds of fish, but my favorite thing to see was the turtles.  The Texas spiny softshell, I believe is what they're called, these amazing little guys are just not shy let me tell you, they will swim right upto you and look you right in the mask! Besides the turtles I loved these little tiny silver fish (Mexican tetras) that will whirl around you making you feel like you're in a fantasia film!  There are so many different fish I couldn't begin to tell you all the names and the visibility was from one end of the pool to the next.   The next dive we did was at around 1400, the vis on this one was not as good mainly due to the fact that there was just more people diving, and although everywhere you looked you saw divers it was still very good vis, just not as good as the first dive.  We did do a night dive there as well, now the pool closes at sundown so if you want to do a night dive you must register beforehand for them to keep the pool open, night time is when we saw more turtles than ever so if you ever go there diving, I recommend one night dive. 

We stayed at the hotel, inside the park we are saving the tent camping for Big Bend!  The rooms were very clean and kept up, and very roomy!  We got the 3 dbl beds since my girls brought a friend with them.

  There was one bed in one room and 2 beds in the other, I have to say we were surprised that it was a "2 room" room since it did not mention that anywhere on their site!  My husband thought it was going to be crazy with 4 girls trying to change in the bathroom every time, he thought for sure he would not get to see the bathroom ever!  So we were definatly pleasantly surprised to see two separate rooms, plus a good size entry where we placed our coolers and ate each time.  They do have rooms with kitchennets there as well.  We also had our own little back porch with a picnic table and a little creek running along side, very nice!

Overall the park was very clean, and well kept after.  Definatly a nice little weekend trip.  The only problem is that like all places in West Texas it was very hot! Except in the pool area, there is little shade elsewhere.