Our Anniversary

Well, it's been a year that we've been married now! May 24th that was anyway. Since "normal" life for us isn't so "normal" at the moment, what we really wanted to do on our anniversary was watch a movie at a movie theater. It's kind of funny how you always want a break from the version of life you happen to be living. But not THAT long of a break! We are definitely still loving our amazing opportunities to travel and experience the world. Anyway, we had a nice anniversary :)

Israel and The Palestinian Territories

Israel is a land that many relate to as a holy place with endless historical and biblical sites.  It hosts so many that we could spend forever talking about it, so we'll just leave you to your own studies for that. As for us, we loved wandering around in Jerusalem's old town through windy streets, markets, and arches. We'll try to share a few pictures we shot while we were there.

Above is the famous Muslim Mosque, Dome of the Rock. Hundreds of years after the second Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Romans on site, the Muslims moved in and built this Mosque. To the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, this site is celebrated as the place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son. The Jewish still yearn for their temple at this location and congregate at the western wall of the temple site, known as the "Western Wailing Wall." See the picture below:

This olive tree on the Mount of Olives is almost 2000 years old. It is possible that it is in the location of the Garden of Gethsemane.

The site below is possibly Golgatha. If you look closely you can see a face in the wall. (Golgatha means "place of the skull").

This place is known as "The Garden Tomb," one of the sıtes where many believe Jesus was placed after his crucifixion. There is another site in Jerusalem in the Church of The Holy Sepulchre that many others believe was his burial location.

We took some time to travel to Bethlehem to see the possible birth site of Jesus, pictured below.

Passing through the west bank was very interesting. The Palestinians have painted graffiti all over the wall, expressing their discontent with what they see as an occupation of their homeland by the Western-backed Israelis. We got an earful from both sides on the issues.

The picture below was painted on the wall of a wall around a Christmas Tree, which may seem to tie into the wall around Bethlehem.

For our final stop in the region, we thought it would be fun to visit the lowest land on Earth at the Dead Sea (1349 feet below sea level) since we had been in the shadows of the highest point on earth looking up to Mount Everest. Rusty was able to lather up in the supposedly healthy mud and go for a salty float. Kelsi was only able to go in up to her ankles with her healing knee since the salt water has stories of intense stinging on open wounds. The ocean water during diving was enough sting for Kelsi, so she'll reminisce in the Great Salt Lake one day. (Her knee is fine though - as some readers had expressed concern - thank you for caring :). We enjoyed watching one lady swimming who started splashing nervously when she struggled to get her feet back under her. The salt is so thick it's hard to even stand back up once you're floating.

Rusty trying to sink:

Dead Sea mud is sold in packages as a rather expensive cosmetic mask. Rusty wants to point out to his mom that he has finally managed to gain back a little weight around his middle, although it seemed to disappear once he went swimming again...

Jordan

You might have be familiar with the above picture of the Treasury in Petra, Jordan from the last supper scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Petra is an amazing place, hewn from the sandstone cliffs by the local Nabataean people (and the Romans later), who used this strategic location to control trade routes.

The Canyon leading up to the entrance of the treasury in Jordan makes the site all the more dramatic.

The sandstone cliffs and arid environment reminded us of Southern Utah. The picture above and below were a couple of our favorite views of the beautiful swirling colors we called tie dye rocks.

In addition to the treasury in Petra, the Nabataeans carved numerous other buildings, dwellings, and stables carved into the rocks.

The Monastery that requires a 45 minute hike. It looks a little bit like the Treasury, but notice the differences.

This is another picture in front of the Treasury, but we thought 3 pictures of this stunning view was acceptable, and the donkey pictured above was such a great photo composition by Rusty.

A couple other views around Petra.

Here is our favorite host, Muslah, from our hostel in Petra. When we arrived, he asked Kelsi if she was missing her family and even offered to call up Kelsi's nephews and nieces for a minute... a really nice gesture! (Ashley, this is who you talked to).

As always, we are continuing to read voraciously as we wait for trains, planes, and automobiles. Here is Kelsi waiting for our bus to our next destination. Really good book "Tis" by Frank McCourt. Now we're definitely going to read his other book, "Angela's Ashes."

At The Red Sea

In addition to being the Biblical place where Moses parted the water, the Red Sea has amazing coral reefs for scuba diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately, on our first day at the Red Sea, Kelsi finally took her turn going to a medical clinic after slipping on wet tile and slamming her knee into a tile ledge. In our 8 or so months out we've only had one major medical situation with Rusty's kidney stone in Nepal. Fortunately, the x-rays of Kelsi's knee didn't show a cracked patella and the gash did more smashing than slicing so stitches weren't required - AND the budget hotel even covered the bill as it happened on their patio. They also comped Kelsi one free dive in the Red Sea! Nevertheless, we lost our first day of diving, which left us some time to photograph the area...

"No Camels and Horses"... only on the Red Sea!

From where we stayed in Egypt, we could look across and see Saudi Arabia. At different places, you can see Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The landscape in all directions was strikingly barren desert leading up to the Red Sea, which was full of great underwater life.

The town of Dahab Egypt had a really nice atmosphere with beautiful restaurants lining the ocean side.

Aside from Dahab Egypt, we also spent time in Aqaba Jordan. We tried the diving in both places, which was really spectacular! Kelsi felt like a mermaid princess during a dive in Dahab called "The Islands" where we swam up and down and through this wall and that wall of absolutely beautiful pastel colored corral after entering the dive through a cave. This site is named "The Islands" because of all the corral formations that are like a bunch of underwater islands. It was the most beautiful corral Kelsi had seen. Rusty thought is was a spectacular dive as well though the corral was more pastel than his liking of brilliant. There was more live corral in beautiful formations than either of us had ever seen though. One amazing brain corral that was crayola blue (the brightest of the corral on this dive) and enormous in size had resident clown fish swimming around in the anemone on top. It's called brain corral because it looks like a brain. There was also soft corral that Kelsi called popcorn corral because there were tons of little round balls opening and closing.

The dive company required that we do an easy dive before this one to make sure we had good buyancy in the water since there were many tight areas where we swam around corral and sometimes we'd be down at 40 feet then we'd swim over a formation at 15 feet, so you had to be careful not to bump into anything nor to pop up to the surface before the safety stop. It was quite an adventurous dive. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures since our waterproof camera broke in New Zealand, but the google picture below may give an idea of what the formations looked like that we were swimming through.


In Aquaba, Jordan, we did a 260 feet long shipwreck dive in amazing visibility. Notice the diver at the top of the ship. Picture from google:


Our second dive in Aquaba, Jordan, we saw the highest concentration of Lion Fish (picture on our Sulawesi blog) we'd ever seen: 10+ at one corner of corral as well as two creepy (and dangerous to the touch) stone fish that looked like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" Black Pearl Pirates. See google image below: