Boulton Family Adventures: Back to the Dead Sea

We woke up to a very cold New Years morning and off we went for some sunrise shots - the first of the year! :)

Everyone had breakfast together and then we cleared out of the camp. We were travelling back to the Dead Sea for tonight. We had planned a few stops to break up the drive. On the way down to Petra we had taken the Kings Highway but decided on the Dead Sea highway for the way back. We got to see some very neat rock layering along the highway (below).

Our first stop was at Shobak castle. It was built by Crusader King Baldwin I (AD 1115). There were many nooks and crannies that we could explore. We went down passageways, under arches, into dungeons, and even went into a secret passage that lead you outside the castle. It was so pitch black dark down there you couldn't see your hand in front of your face - good job we had our headlamps.

On the tower there were Quranic inscriptions carved in Kufic script (Right) which was neat to see.

Samantha decided she would like to be a solider when she grows up.

After the castle we continued on our drive on the Dead Sea coast road. When we came out of the mountains and were on the flats before the sea there were a lot of farms; most of them tomatoes. We saw so many trucks laddened down with tomatoes - we also got to see why the tomatoes are usually soft when we get them.

The drive along the coast was very nice and the scenery was beautiful. The water was such a pretty aqua color along the edge. Once we got closer we were able to see that is was because of the large accumulation of salt at the waters edge.

To get close to the water's edge we had to climb over salt encrusted rocks. It was neat to see the different water lines - there was a large band of salt and then gravel and sand and then another large band of salt.