My wife and myself are signed up at the local school she teaches at. They have a indoor pool and instructers from a dive school on central ave in Albany coming down for the instructions and initial shallow water dives. My wife set it all up, so I am not to sure about the details but I know they said to finalize the certification we had to do a dive in lake george.. Either one of us have dived before but we have looked into it many times on vacation. We have always decided against it due to the fact you have to sacrafice 2-3 days of your vacation to dive to any decent depths. After this course it is my understanding we can dive anywhere inside or outside the country with our certifications??
I think there are a couple places in Albany that do training. I'll bet you'll be doing your cert dives at Hearthstone State Campsite just north of the village. About 4 companies use that site for cert dives.
A couple in our open water class did the "vacation dive experience" and was surprised by what you are NOT told by the groups "training" at the resorts. They said it was scary what they weren't aware of until our classes.....
Anyway, with your open water certification, you can dive anywhere world-wide. But you will only be certified to 60' unless you take more training. We have our advanced cert which allows for 100' depth, night dives, and a couple other things. Next is some specialty stuff like cave and ice diving...possibly dry suit too. It's an addicting sport (to us at least). We got certified in May last yr and I have logged 70 dives and just over 33 hours under water since then. Can't wait to get this season started...just want to let the lake warm up a bit......
If you have any questions about it all.... feel free to ask.....