A photo journal (and several video clips thanks to the iPhone live photo mode!) from last weekend’s adventure to the Airport Tide Pools here in American Samoa.

I was elated to find that we had a new federal holiday, and in honor of Juneteenth, I wanted to celebrate my everyday freedoms by going outside!

Weekend Adventure Highlights:

The sun shone after a week of blustery weather, so it was a perfect day for an island adventure.

Ian, Creighton, and I paddled from our house to the airport strip, and Yodi dog came with us! She swam the entire way to the airport — she’s such a champ.

We hiked over to the ‘pools’ and immediately spotted several baby black tip reef sharks cruising by.

While we were snorkeling, we saw a cloud of sand about 15 feet beneath us, and when it had settled, we saw it was a large stingray getting cozy in the sand.

There were tons of fish… mostly small ones… but I was so happy still to be surrounded by lots of fish. Oh, and the coral looked good as well… not great, but there was still decent live coral coverage, which is good to see after the severe bleaching event several years ago.

I speared a fish! This was my second time ever catching a fish… it was small but larger than my first fish, so hey, that’s progress!

We snorkeled for probably like two hours, then hung out on the rocky beach talking stories. The guys talked mostly… I kept getting back in the water because it was a hot day and there was no shade; plus, I was having an absolute blast jumping off the steep slope and practicing my freediving.