LET'S GET PHYSICAL!

Day 6- Friday, March 5

CINDY

Yup. That’s right. This whole day was full of physical activity—by physical activity I mean walking, walking, walking, AND more walking.. We started out that morning walking through the National Park at En Gedi.. and guess what?! In the middle of this desert there are waterfalls. Yup! Several! How incredibly ironic is that?! Waterfalls in the middle of the desert! I loved it. I couldn’t wait to keep climbing higher and finding another one! Waterfalls are my absolute favorite. I touched them all (of course!) and it was clear water and cool to the touch in such a hot day it was perfect. I wish I had my bathing suit on underneath I would have jumped right in! Well me being the adventurous type I started hopping on the rocks in some of the streams that the waterfalls flowed into.. and yup… my foot.. well both of them slipped and my sneakers and socks were soaked in one second. I laughed so hard. I would have to climb through our next stop, Masada with my soaking wet sneakers… hopefully in this desert heat maybe my sneakers might dry up.. haha. I just didn’t care. I was having too much fun and was just enjoying it so much that my soaking sneakers did not even phase me.. the landscape and scenery was just too breathtaking and beautiful☺



Well the exercise didn’t stop there… there was more walking and climbing… including climbing down the “Snake Path” on the side of the desert mountain on top of which Herod the Great’s desert palace is located. The desert palace is called Masada and it belonged to Herod the Great. Actually Herod the Great owned four desert palaces! It was a crazy feat to climb around and down that mountain. We took a cable car up and a few of us opted for the adventurous route back down to the bus parking lot via the winding “Snake Path” It went down and around that mountain with steps and gravels slopes. At one point I stopped to take a picture and one of my legs began to tremble !! I was like “Ok, must keep going” At one point I jogged about a quarter of a mile down. At our end point we had two options: to take the winding less sloped road to the buses or straight down a gravel slope where we would not be able to necessarily stop our momentum. Dr. Panell gave me the choice. Guess which one I chose?! Ha. Yup. MOMENTUM! Lol. There were 4 of us ahead of everyone else and so all 4 just started to run. I was hooting and laughing all the way down as I literally could not stop by feet. I kept hearing the guy behind me “Oh no, I don’t want to run you over… I can’t stoooooop!” lol. We arrived at the end and I let out a big whooping “WoOOOoooHOOoooOO!” We were all out of breath but we all had smiles on our faces. What a great celebratory way to end the longest most treacherous track down a desert mountain… we were all ready for lunch ☺

The COOL THING about Masada is that in one of the “libraries” or rooms where they kept the retired scrolls, the archaeologist(s) found a piece of a scroll. That particular piece had the words “Shall these dead bones live?” Cool, huh? Out of all the different things they could find on that one piece of scroll, they found one of the key verses from Ezekiel’s chapter with the Valley of Dry Bones. There in Masada after many Jews (men, women, and children) committed suicide, their bones continue to live as their story is alive today as it was back in their day. Through the archaelogists excavated this area, they have in a way allows these bones to live again.

P.S. we got to climb up and into Cave 11 where the Isaiah scroll was found. How cool is that?!
P.P.S. here is a picture of a plant in the desert that has sweet water inside of it. They believe this is the "honey" that John the Baptist ate since there are no bees in the desert.



Hal Quote of the Day: “The thing about being below sea level is that the one way you can go is to go up… So cheer up you pessimists.” ☺