06-16-2014, 04:46 PM
Hi all - newly certified diver here, hoping you all can give me some up to date info on places to dive around here since I see some conflicting info...
My husband and I and a friend got certified together through the great folks over at Aquaventure last month. We are looking for lakes/quarries close to the cities that we might want to go to practice some skills, not necessarily for site seeing, although decent visibility would still be a plus. Here's all we've done so far (we live in Brooklyn Park BTW):
Square Lake of course, where we got certified.
We did a jaunt up to Quarry Park Reserve in Waite Park and dove quarry #18. We were pretty unimpressed having to hike about half a mile to the site, and the quarry itself did not seem to have a large diving area due to the big hunks of granite blocking the way. It's an even further hike to get to the other quarries that are diveable.
Our instructors recommended Christmas Lake and Little Long Lake, but I saw some info here (not super recent though?) that said Christmas wasn't the best.
I also found this upper midwest dive sites with a bunch in MN. Besides the two I just mentioned, are any of the others in the cities decent at all? I thought I saw something along the lines here of Lake Minnetonka being pretty nasty.
Any help with where to go would be great! We're basically looking for places that we can go spur of the moment, leave your dog at home kind of thing. We are planning to go to Crosby area and Wazee but those will be well planned trips most likely. Also we don't have a boat...
Thanks guys!
My husband and I and a friend got certified together through the great folks over at Aquaventure last month. We are looking for lakes/quarries close to the cities that we might want to go to practice some skills, not necessarily for site seeing, although decent visibility would still be a plus. Here's all we've done so far (we live in Brooklyn Park BTW):
Square Lake of course, where we got certified.
We did a jaunt up to Quarry Park Reserve in Waite Park and dove quarry #18. We were pretty unimpressed having to hike about half a mile to the site, and the quarry itself did not seem to have a large diving area due to the big hunks of granite blocking the way. It's an even further hike to get to the other quarries that are diveable.
Our instructors recommended Christmas Lake and Little Long Lake, but I saw some info here (not super recent though?) that said Christmas wasn't the best.
I also found this upper midwest dive sites with a bunch in MN. Besides the two I just mentioned, are any of the others in the cities decent at all? I thought I saw something along the lines here of Lake Minnetonka being pretty nasty.
Any help with where to go would be great! We're basically looking for places that we can go spur of the moment, leave your dog at home kind of thing. We are planning to go to Crosby area and Wazee but those will be well planned trips most likely. Also we don't have a boat...
Thanks guys!