After meeting Jeff Rice, owner of Portage Quarry in Bowling Green, Ohio (click for link) and founder of the International Legends of Diving event (click for link), a new friendship was immediately struck.  In the past year, I’ve not only become friends with Jeff, but his entire staff and customer base up in Ohio.  He kept jokingly saying to me, “yeah, we don’t know nothin’ about diving up here in Ohio”.  But once I finally got up to his neck of the woods, it became immediately evident that his sarcasm was far superior to even mine!  This is not just a diving quarry, its a DAMN GOOD diving quarry, and a volleyball center, the beach for an entire college town, an entertainment pavilion, a campground with a seasonal semi-permanent community that takes you in like family, and a full-service dive shop with fills and the finest diving history museum I’ve ever seen.

I was in Chicago exhibiting my photography, so it was about a 5-ish-hour drive.  The mission for the next few days was to teach a photo workshop over the weekend, get some new shots for Jeff to use in promo materials,  . . . .and to eat.  And eat I did.  Everywhere I turned, someone from the campground area was stuffing me with food from their RV campsite. I’d happily oblige, but 15’ outside of that campsite, someone else would lure me in with ribs, pasta salad, brownies, . . . .the list goes on and on, but the point is - I’d be 15 lbs heavier and 20 minutes late by the time I got to the water each day!

The workshop went over great - I really hope everyone got what they wanted out of it, and I hope to do it again on an even bigger scale as soon as I move back home to the USA, since I now live in Papua New Guinea.  I never thought I’d be saying it, but I can’t wait to get back up there to dive in that rock quarry - it really was the most fun I’ve had in a looooooong time.  There were tons of fish (bass, sunnies, catfish, carp, koi, & more), and tons of photo-ops.  My only regret was not bringing a macro lens - there were dragonfly larvae and isopods and small shrimp begging to be photographed, and I only brought a fisheye lens.  But that just gives me an excuse to return!

I also wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to the Pat, Leslie, Mac, & Riley who opened up their RV home to me and took me in like family.  Tom, who’s an instructor there, gave me several guided tours to the hotspots of the quarry deserves special mention for all the time he spent.  Other Tom, who was instrumental in organizing the workshop and is the techie-brains behind the quarry’s website (click for Tom’s website).  Monica, who makes sure everything around there runs like a well-oiled machine.  And of course Jeff, who until I got up there, thought he just ran a quarry and organized the Legends of Diving event - but I now realize that he IS a diving legend himself, not to mention a pretty damn good guy.  There’s just too many other great people up there to list, both staff at the quarry and customers/residents.  I’ve always felt that the world is full of great dive locations, but what makes a day or a week of diving is not necessarily the place you’ve travelled to, but the people you hang out with while doing it, and this is the coolest bunch of dive junkies I know!  Honestly, if you live within 2000 miles or so, just get off your butt and go find out for yourself!

Can’t wait until my next trip up there!!!