We're headed South through the desert. The Dead Sea and Masada fortress is our destination. The Sea comes into view and it certainty looks "DEAD" We park and decide to take a dip. The Dead Sea is 8.6 times higher in salt content than the ocean. We see people floating high in the water. Dave decides to do his usual entry with a dive head first. Wooooha! Not a good idea. Back on the beach flushing his burning eyes with fresh water. He decides he doesn't like the Dead Sea. It'll kill ya! His throat is burning any cuts or open wounds are stinging. We came all the way here for this? A good flush down under the fresh water shower and things were better. Judy decided to slap some mud on her face.... She seemed to actually enjoy it.... hmm. We can now say that we "swam" in the dead sea. CHECK!... Probably won't be back here real soon.



Back on the road we head down the west side of the "Sea". We arrive at our digs for the night. A super deluxe hostel. Not bad, AC, private rooms with baths. It's hot outside and we keep to the air conditioned building for dinner. There is nothing around for miles anyway. This is the departure point for climbing the trail UP to Masada.



We wake up at 4:30 AM. The four of us stumble around in the dark and finally find the trail up to the ancient fortress. Neville and Mark zoom ahead while Judy and Dave trudge along at a more civilized paced. Up we go. We climb for an hour and a half. Finally we arrive at the summit just before the sun creeps up over the Jordanian desert. The light of a new day is upon us. The mercury starts to climb. A couple of hours are spent walking through the ruins was all the heat we could take. It was time to head down the hill. There is gondola that is the easy (smart) way of coming and going. The problem is it doesn't start running until 0800. We would have missed the all important sunrise. Plus look at all the exercise we got. We're ready to head down to a cool shower. It's only 07:30. We decide we need even more exercise so, down we go. About half way Dave's knees decide to act up. As we're stumbling along we look up. There goes the gondola. hmmmm. We did make it back mostly in one piece. After breakfast and a nice cool shower we were ready to hit the road.


Two and a half hours drive and we are back aboard Freebird. It feels so good to be home.