We had a hot day in Israel today! It must have been in the 90's--not really the perfect day to be at the top of the Masada! (But perhaps better than going in July!)
We had our last buffet breakfast at the Ramada in Jerusalem and packed up our bags for a circuitous route to Galilee.
First stop: the Masada, southeast of Jerusalem on the Dead Sea. There is a walking route up to the Masada, but it is 1800 feet in elevation change, and might be too much of a challenge for our group. We lost 11 people yesterday and added 18, so we're up to 28 people now.
Happily, our tour included a cable car ride to the top! I'll bet the Romans might have liked that when they were seiging the fortress!
The views from the top were incredible. Miles of hot, dry dirt! You can see the squares of dirt where the Romans made their encampment at the bottom of the hill.
Ed was Kathy's helper today. She had a couple in the group that went home yesterday that had helped her all over Jerusalem. She uses a walker to get around, and has to have someone help her up and down steps. There were a lot of steps at the Masada, and it was REALLY HOT, to boot!
Every chance we got we sat down in the shade to cool off!
Ken got to be Daniel's umbrella man while he read from the scriptures to us. He uses a cell phone, like we all do, but with the brightness of the sun, it is hard to read even in the shade. Ken was up to the task far more than Crystal several days ago.
There were a few flowers left from their spring bloom a few weeks ago. But, they were hanging on for dear life! It is amazing anything can grow in that harsh climate!
A group of 960 Jewish zealots took their own lives here rather than surrender to the Romans. But, they had been well provisioned, even having some ritual bath tubs. I thought that tub would have made life very bearable here!
Their system of cisterns helped them conserve water. We were happy they also had some fresh water at the top for us!
We bought some crunch ice cream bars for the bus. They were even better than the ones in the states. I'm glad we didn't know about these earlier! We would have been buying them at every rest stop!
Our next stop was Qumran, the Essene site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Behind Crystal is a cave similar to the ones where the scrolls were discovered in 1947.
They had a copy of the temple scroll on display, but we had already seen the real one in the Israeli Museum last week!
I took a selfie, then proceeded to take another 8-10 selfies, thinking I had switched the camera direction. It was too bright to see the screen, so I didn't notice! I deleted all of the squinty-eyed accidental selfies I took, but Crystal thought I should have posted a few of them!
I did get this picture, so you can get the idea. Hot and dry, with cisterns and ritual baths!
We had a beautiful view of the Dead Sea from the bus all day. It looked a little like the Mediterranean!
We even got a chance to go swimming in the Dead Sea. It is 27 percent salt content. The ocean is only 3 percent salt!
The sand at Kalia Beach was muddy and black, and when you got salt on your lips you were stuck with it till you got out to wash up!
But, it was totally worth it. Floating was easy, and very comfortable! Daniel guaranteed us we couldn't get sunburned at 1400 feet below sea level! We'll see about that when we wake up tomorrow! But even if we didn't get sunburned, we did get hot and tired, and did a little snoozing on our way up to Galilee. Hopefully, that will be a good start toward our early morning wake up call tomorrow!
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