The Dead Sea

After we finished in Jerusalem and were heading back toward Egypt, we made a stop at the Dead Sea in a little tiny town called Ein Gedi. That place is famous because in 1 Samuel 23 & 24 it's where David was hiding from Saul. In the Bible, it's spelled En-gedi.

We were actually surprised to see how clear the water looked at the Dead Sea and also how big the Dead Sea was! The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth - it's 400 meters below sea level.

It was ridiculous how much salt there was. In some places there were little islands of salt. It had really built up on some of the rocks and even on this boat.

Susannah and Katherine found the Dead Sea mud and covered themselves with it. I really liked this shot of Katherine and the coast behind her.

I was content to be the camera person on this one. The mud did make their skin very soft as did the water itself. I don't have many pictures of us floating on the water. It was amazingly buoyant. Katherine has some on her camera. When she gets back I'll have to snag her pictures and update this post a little. We also took some video that I'll see if we can get on here.

They're actually not looking lovingly into each other's eyes. We wanted a back shot, but I thought it would look nice with some profile. It turned out a little humorous.

This was a shot from our hostel balcony. You can see Jordan across the sea.

Here we are on the balcony as well. It was so hot there in Ein Gedi.

These two Swiss men were in the room next to us. The one in the middle LOVED Susannah. He was really cool. They kept bringing us food and we had some great conversations about Israel and even about the Church.

I liked this shot that Susannah took with the road signs. Eilat is the Israeli city at the border with Egypt where we crossed.

Susannah got this shot of Katherine and I at the bus stop waiting for our ride to the border. I like the valley behind us. That's where they say David hid - somewhere around there anyway.

We did have reservations for the bus, but when we got on, there were no seats so we were on the floor for awhile. Seats would open up gradually as people got off at different stops. I got the first open seat so I snapped this picture of the girls on the floor. We drove right by Masada. It was a pretty tall hill. I'm not exactly sure why I didn't take a picture of it! Oops! Another thing I don't have a picture of is the Red Sea. It was beautiful! The most beautiful areas I saw were right at the border and pictures aren't allowed at that point.