Holy Land Pilgrimage 5

 This is a last look at the Mount of Beatitudes Guest House area before we leave.  Below is the domed church and above some of the beautiful garden area.

Here is how they plant in the desert to preserve moisture, which is very important since the Sea of Galilee has gone quite a ways over the years.  The Dead Sea is going down even faster because the water from the Sea of Galilee never gets all the way down the Jordan River to it because of the irrigation.  God needs to do for them what He has done in the Midwest to refill the dams, hopefully in Israel it will not be to flood stage.

 These were taken from a rest stop/gas station right along the Jordan River.  You can see how important the flowers are to keep everything from looking terribly bleak.

The razor wire fencing does not help with keeping things from looking bleak but there are still a lot of signs that this is not a place of peace.  There are several areas we saw with "Beware of land mines" signs.

 This is a brand new area that has been opened up along the Jordan River for tourists to come and renew their baptisms.

 I'm pretty sure that they said that it was a Franciscan church on the other side of the Jordan, which would be the country of Jordan.

A land mine sign.

Our next stop was Qumran to see the area that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and where the Essenes had lived and hidden them.  Here we are waiting for a video of the story to be shown in English.

Flat Stanley seems to like the desert

Here he was messing around and got too close to the edge of an old empty cistern that had been a part of the purification baths of the Essene Community.

 The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the cave you can barely see in this picture.

 Flat Stanley always seems to be ready for lunch.  Good soup, salad, chicken and peas with carrots.

Here is Flat Stanley pointing out the sign on our bus so that everyone gets onto the right one.

 The we actually went to the Dead Sea.  As you can see mud baths are really popular because they are supposed to make you skin very soft.  Below, just to the left of center you should be able to spot a few heads sticking out of the mud hole.  Growing up on the farm I saw the pigs doing this same ritual.  I stayed out of it.

 Our next stop was in Jericho to see the Mount of Temptation.  Above you can see the cables and the cable cars coming down from the station high up the mountain.  Below you have a view from the cable car.

 The cable cars only took us up half way to the top.  You then can climb a stairs to go up higher and go to the monastery that is built into the side of the mountain.

Even when we got to the monastery we were not to the top but this is a picture of how far we would have had to climb yet to be where the devil took Jesus to tempt Him.

This is looking along the side of the monastery.  We were not allowed to take picture inside but the chapel icons were amazing.  There are only two monks left in this place.

You might be able to guess that Temptation Cave is a shopping area.

Flat Stanley doesn't have any euros so he can't do any shopping.

This is the front face of the mountain.

Now we are heading back down on the cable cars and the guy behind us is taking our picture so I took his.   Everyone noticed the sign when the car stopped half way up.  Few of us noticed the spelling problem right away.

This is a picture of a picture of the monastery.

As we were heading to Jerusalem for the night we stopped at this very out of the way sight for evening prayer.  It was very desolate but there was this cross and down the hill was another monastery.  What was amazing was that within minutes after we got there two Arabs came to see if they could sell us souvenirs. 

Here is the monastery.