Well, Kaitlyn now has completed her first 'deep' dive.  Well, at least
compared to the dives in Florida.  Grace and a couple of her friends
had some sort of gathering that they were wanting to do in Austin on
Friday, so we drove up there on Friday morning.  While Grace and her
friends were doing their stuff, Kaitlyn and I headed over to Lake
Travis.  We went over to Windy Point, but I couldn't find anyone
manning the pump station.  Drove back out to the main highway to use
one of the shops that I had seen there,. but it turned out that the
shop was closed, so I searched around a bit, only to find the other
shops in the area closed / out of business also.  I tried to call back
over to Windy Point and the person who answered said that I should
have used the phone sitting on the counter in the fill station to call
someone to go man the fill station.  Well, we drove back over there
and someone was there this time, so we paid our entrance fees ($5 per
person on weekdays, $10 per person on weekend) and paid to get our 2
tanks filled ($6 per tank).  The carts that they had for transporting
dive gear was well worth the extra $2 over what the nearby state parks
charged.  They used bicycle type wheels for the carts and were
balanced such that even with a lot of dive gear, they would be easy to
move.  I understand that they are in the process of selling the dive
park because the taxes have gotten so high that they can't afford to
run it anymore.  They have 12.5 acres and they already have a buyer
who is paying $12.5 million for it.  Because of all the high end
houses in the area, the appraised value of property has gone up so
much over the last few years that people who just want to keep the
land that they've had for a long time can't afford to live there
anymore.  I guess it's nice to see that your property is increasing in
value, but it kind of sucks to find out that because of this, you
can't afford to own it anymore.  I suspect that the new owners will
want to make the property residential since I can't really see it
making enough money as a dive park to recoup that sort of investment.

Lake Travis is quite a bit higher than normal due to all the rain that
we've been getting over the summer this year.  The stairway that
normally leads down the rocky embankment to the water is submerged
except for about 2 ft of the uppermost handrail.  Normally, Lake
Travis has a pretty had thermoclime at around 60 ft or so.  There
wasn't much of one on that day though.  It got a bit cooler as you
went down, but only to the point where it felt refreshing as compared
to overly warm at the surface.  The last time I dove Lake Travis, I
think it went down to less than 60F at 60 ft.  Visibility was pretty
bad at the surface, but got better at around 10-15 ft.  We followed
the stairway until we got to what used to be the dock / water entry
platform.  I believe that we were probably around 20 ft under at this
point.  It was starting to get dark at this depth, but you could still
see the various fish that were swimming around.  Along the platform
there was a ladder which I suspect used to be used for people climbing
back up to the platform when the water was probably 25 ft lower than
it is these days.  We followed the ladder to the rocks and then found
a chain that headed off down the slope, so we followed it.  Although I
had a small light with me, I should have stopped off and gotten some
new batteries for my HID light and used it instead.  At it turned out,
the chain was not attached to anything on the other end.  By that
time, we were down at around 90 ft.  We contined downslope for a bit
more, stopped at 102 ft, and then proceeded along the shoreline at
that depth checking out other things.  Stumbled across what I think
were baby catfish.  I originally thought that they were minnows, but
closer examination showed that they were pinkish colored and about
1.5-2 inches long and had whiskers, so I think they were baby catfish.
Other than this, we didn't encounter any fish at depth.  There were
quite a few larger fish around the dock and at the submerged dive
platform that we stumbled across later while swimming along the shore.
I think that the submerged platform was probably at around 60 ft.  It
appears to be one that they use for dive training for the open water
certification dives by the various dive shops, but with all the recent
rain, they're quite a bit deeper than they used to be.

Here's a photo of the area leading down to the lake at Windy Point
that I found on another site:
http://www.scubaadventurer.com/windy-point-camping.htm

Here's what the stairs leading down to the lake look like at normal
lake elevations:
http://www.scubaadventurer.com/windy-point-point-stairwell.htm
This photo doesn't show quite a bit of the stairs leading up further
along the rocks.

The only depth that I'm actually sure of is the maximum depth since it
gets logged on my dive computer.  The other depths are basically
estimates from what I might remember during the dive.  Perhaps Dillon
can pipe in and give us a bit more accurate information on the current
levels of the various structures at Windy Point.

One good thing about the lake being so high though is that you don't
have to carry your gear up a long stairway.

Max depth -- 102 ft
Total dive time -- 40 minutes

Kaitlyn tried to log the dive and couldn't figure out how to determine
what group she was in after the dive since the tables wouldn't allow
that as a no decompression dive.  On the other hand, my dive computer
only had us just at the top of the green zone, not even lighting up
the first dot of the yellow zone.  I guess sometimes dive computers
are good... <grin>