Masada and the Dead Sea

Loving my life on the Dead Sea

This was one of my favorite days from the whole semester!!! We have been on sooo many field trips and sometimes it's really hard to appreciate everything you see in a day because we go to tons of different sites, many of which seem very similar to sites we've visited before.

This day was perfect because the places we visited were so unique!

Our first stop was Qumran, the site where the Dead Seal Scrolls were found! It was a secluded community of extremely Orthodox Jews back in the day.

With Marianna in front of the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the rock crevices that you can see behind us!

Masada was next and had to be one of the coolest historical sites in Israel and the world!

Masada was amazing. I couldn't believe that an entire city was built on top of such a huge natural rock formation. The history of Masada is pretty cool too. It was built by Herod and was one of his many incredible palace cities. The Romans found a way to breach the practically unpenatrable mountain fortress by surrounding the entire city and then building a ramp up to the western wall. When they finally succeeded in breaking through the western wall, they found an entire community dead. All nearly 1,000 inhabitants killed each other in order to avoid be captured and enslaved.

View of the Dead Sea from Masada. You can see a Roman Fort (square) in bottom right corner.

Walking along the edge of the mountain towards the temple on the north side.

The west side of Masada. You can see the ramp going up to the western wall slightly left of the center of this photo.

This is how Lauren feels about old rocks... I mean ancient historic sites.

With Lauren and Marianna on the south side of Masada

Next we went on a short hike to the waterfalls in En Gedi. This used to be the main water supply for Masada and the place of refuge for David when he fled from Saul.

 Waterfall at En Gedi (with Lauren, Marianna, Meghan, Grace, and Christeen)

Ok the Dead Sea was unforgettable. First of all, it was beautiful. I did not expect it to be so pretty!! 

Second of all, I expected the water to feel a lot thicker! I knew the high salt content would cause me to be a lot more buoyant but I didn't realize it would feel just like water I'd swam in before. 

Third, there was mud. A lot of it!!

With Rachel, Adam, Jordan, Spencer, Lauren, and Austin. 

We just played in the mud and floated all afternoon. This was another highlight of the semester for me :)

BTOML