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Kelsey

@kelseycardace

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🦀 Marylander in San Diego
✈️ Checking off countries (51), birds (300) and national parks (17)

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Did we really think that my first post from Peru would be anything besides a montage of animals?? #PetsofPeru 🦙🐕🐈🐎 by @kelseycardace

Buceadora avanzada 🤿🫧🐠🐡🪸Gave myself the best Christmas present possible: my Advanced Open Water Diver Certification!

Over 5 dives I was able to improve my buoyancy and navigation skills and experience night diving, drifts (currents), and deeper water, hitting a maximum depth of 31.4 m or 102 ft!

Thank you @oceanloversdivecenter for the most incredible experience these past few days, @armando_scuba for being the best instructor/photographer I could’ve asked for, and @roos.geelhoed for being my buddy through it all both in and out of the water 🙌🏼

Photos include a seahorse, GINORMOUS green moray eel, pufferfish and lionfish chilling together inside a barrel sponge, flounder, spotted eel (I think my personal favorite of the trip), and tons of other pretty fishies and coral 🤩 by @kelseycardace

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I share that my father, Anthony Cardace, passed away Saturday.

I feel unbelievable peace knowing I was able to spend his final days with him. His health had declined in recent years and it was hard being in SD knowing his days were numbered, but I took a flight home Wednesday night and spent time with him Thursday and Friday. He didn’t have much strength to talk but the words I did understand from him clearly were “I love you.” He was himself until the end, rolling his eyes at his family and asking a nurse for a water cup 2/3 full (because God forbid she brought a full cup). His nurse told me he said he was so glad I was there. We visited him Saturday and he was asleep, looking so peaceful. We didn’t disturb him, letting him get the rest he had so desperately needed. We’d like to believe that when he passed a few hours later, he was still peacefully asleep.

My dad was a brilliant, intelligent, insanely outgoing man. He was an Air Force veteran, had a master’s degree in Russian, was a HCPSS substitute teacher in his retirement, and was the cornerstone of his trivia team. He loved my sister and me more than anything in the world. He was so proud of us, always bragging about our accomplishments. I most recently recall him telling his nurses that I was a surfer (idk about that 🙃) and he asked me my official job title, which is a mouthful, and would always repeat it back to me when I saw him and tell me to keep up the good work.

Despite having all of this, he struggled for as long as I can remember with depression and bipolar disorder. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about mental illness, it’s that it knows no bounds. My passion for promoting mental health awareness comes from my experiences with him over the years as well as my own diagnosis, promising myself I wouldn’t end up like that.

So while my family appreciates condolences however you like to show them, please consider donating in dad’s name to @active_minds to promote mental health awareness (link in bio).

Rest in peace, Daddy, I love you forever and ever and I’ll be carrying that with me until we’re together again ❤️ by @kelseycardace

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of hammerheads 🦈🩵

Unfortunately I find the beach crowds of 4th of July stressful and instead opted to spend my holiday where I feel most at peace: suspended in the middle of the ocean with no view of the bottom and sharks all around me.

Cabo gave me an unbelievable two days of diving, from crossing hammerheads off my bucket list, to schools of rays swimming overhead, to discovering a newfound love of the Bumphead Parrotfish. One day of diving right along the rocks at the very end of Baja, another day dropping into what felt like the middle of nowhere in the open water to 115 ft depth. As usual, my 9-year-old GoPro can’t do it justice. Thank you to @hammerheaddivers for some of this footage and a totally wild adventure 🤙🏼 by @kelseycardace

Santa Fe rewind: art, prairie dogs, ancient indigenous cliff dwellings, hot springs, and (of course) birdies ⏪🏜️🐦‍⬛🎨🌋 by @kelseycardace

Tamarindo & Playa Grande (6 months later) 🇨🇷

Considering seeing the howler monkeys+baby was a top moment of 2025 for me, I’m kinda shocked I’ve been sitting on this content this long.

Beyond the diving, which I posted about many moons ago, and the surfing, which as per usual I have zero evidence of, this part of the trip was filled with magical animal encounters, secluded beach walks (only in Playa Grande), and the most expensive food I’ve experienced in Latin America. They call it Tamagringo for a reason though 🤷🏻‍♀️ by @kelseycardace

La Paz 🩵 With the abundance of marine life, this trip, like almost all my solo trips, brought out the best parts of myself. I’ll be riding the high of seeing whale sharks and a surprise giant manta ray for many many months. It may even outshine the horrible memory of having food poisoning the night before 🥲

I also got to scuba dive with sea lions and thousands of fish, so it’s pretty obvious why Jacques Cousteau called the Sea of Cortez “the world’s aquarium” and it gained UNESCO World Heritage status.

Also worth celebrating is Balandra Beach, which is definitely in my top 5 beaches of all time (and I’ve been to a LOT of beaches) 😍

Had a blast thanks to @diveinlapaz.mexico and my buddy @hannah_elisabeth_due… it wouldn’t have been the same without you!! by @kelseycardace

It all started with a booby 🩵 #NationalBirdDay

Are you ever gearing up for a dive off the coast of Puerto Vallarta and then look up and see blue-footed boobies? Because same. I was so excited by the possibility of what I might see under the water that I wasn’t even thinking about what was above the water. I associated boobies with the Galápagos Islands, somewhere remote, not knowing that they would pop up when I wasn’t looking for them.

My mom had just recently introduced me to @merlin.bird.id, so when I realized there was a way to archive the cool species I had seen and will see in the future, I became hooked! My memories of puffins in Maine, ibises aka bin chickens in Australia, and the strange-looking Egyptian Geese of Germany now had a place to live alongside dreams of seeing toucans (check!), penguins, and a now plethora of species I never knew existed before.

I brought the obsession home from Mexico where I started seeing San Diego through a new lens and have been building my life list ever since 🥲

📍Islas Marietas
✔️ Blue-footed booby
✔️ Cocos booby by @kelseycardace

All the makings of a perfect San Diego holiday season🎄🎁☀️

✅ Two-week visit from mom
✅ Thanksgiving in Palm Springs
✅ Expensive cocktails at Christmas bars
✅ Excessive birdwatching
✅ King Tides tidepooling
✅ A newfound women’s snorkeling community by @kelseycardace

Coincidence that I happened to get into birding the same year I turned 30? I think not 😏🦅🦆🦜🦢

Fun fact: all of these videos were taken in San Diego! It’s amazing how much biodiversity there is here once you start looking for it.

Thank you to @merlin.bird.id, @sandiegobirdalliance, and @missiontrails_regionalpark for making this new hobby fun and accessible! by @kelseycardace

Monteverde ⛰️💚

Between the baby coatis and cool weather, I was kind of in love with this town that many people seem to overlook. Its location at higher elevation and along the edge of a tectonic plate creates the cloud forest ecosystem, presenting a ton of wildlife you won’t find in the tropical rainforest.

I did a day tour where I mostly saw different kinds of birds, including an elusive quetzal and the spadebill in this post coming back to the nest to feed her baby (1st part of video is 1x speed, 2nd part is 0.5x). And on the night tour, I saw some nocturnal species like the kinkajou and opossum, plus the bark scorpion which glows in UV light! Also saw 3 different tarantulas but I’m kind enough not to include them in this post 🫶🏼

And lastly enjoy me on the Tarzan swing from hell from my zip line adventure at @xtremoparque 🫣 by @kelseycardace

Labor Day weekend, San Diego style 😎🤿🌊⚾️☀️

I’ve always loved the wildlife around here, but post-Costa Rica trip I’m looking at our city through a whole new lens, reminding myself that I live in a place where I get to carry on vacation activities after a trip is over. Plus, I’m kinda obsessed with building up my lists of species on @inaturalistorg and @merlin.bird.id 🤓

Fun fact: San Diego County is the most biodiverse county in the continental United States, so while we don’t have monkeys and toucans like Central America, there is so much wildlife to celebrate all around us 🎉 (and yes I know Kona and the Padre aren’t wildlife but they are both so cute!!!) by @kelseycardace