The Dead Sea!

Almost there!


That mountain is a big pile of salt!


Sandals at the Dead Sea...


A VERY bizarre experience... awesome!


Bek and Madison with a bunch of salt.


The princesses.


That is where Sodom and Gomorrah used to be (I'm not sure if I would have built there myself... :O). I still don't know what to read into the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah is next to the Dead Sea and Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

On the way to the Dead Sea...

The Sandals Parade after looking at huge hole in the ground (a crater actually).


Matt and I pondering something really deep...


This means the "Scorpion Ascent"...


That's a silly name! Crazy!!


Yes, our ridiculously long bus made it down this road... thanks to the best bus driver ever... You rock Abed!!!


They farm EVERYTHING here!

Lunch with the Bedouins!

The Bedouin people call this place home...


They serve up some delicious hummus!!!


This is where we napped during, I mean heard an awesome presentation from a Bedouin man who taught us
- how to ground coffee... not for dancing, just for pleasure
- that if you get a full cup of coffee, that is a bad thing (1st half cup = welcome, 2nd half cup for sword... we don't get it either, 3rd half cup means friends, and 4th half cup is a party!)
- how to know if a camel has one eye and no tail
- and that is why some Bedouins have blue eyes...

Oh my guide! :O)

Madison showing me up...

Not hard to do... but Madison is a little TOO good at showing me up with her mad eye for good photos! Here's the proof.




An Ibex having a little snack.


Us learning about how Moses led the people of Israel through that valley below us.

Negev Desert!

Imagine wandering in that for 40 years!


The Browns, Tonggs, and Mitchells reunite! Poor Isaac :O)

A spring, which I have forgotten the name of, which was used by Moses and stuff.

Our Church Family Reunion!!!

On 5/8, we met our dear Church family at the airport in Tel Aviv! It was great medicine to see familiar faces... who speak English even! Dear friends indeed!


We didn't know it then, but Isaac (our tour guide holding the sign) and I would BFF's in no time! :O)


This is where David fought Goliath! That's just CRAZY!!!


A standard view out the bus window here in Israel... :O) It was about this time that I (Steven) got in trouble for standing up in the bus as I had seen many others do. And so began my name being yelled whenever anybody got in trouble. :O)


Our first Kibbutz! They are Israeli communities (communes)! They let us stay there and it felt a lot like camp! :O)


Mikey and I were going to get up and take photos of the sunrise together. Mikey didn't make it, nor did I really... this as close to sunrise as I could get. This random art was at our Kibbutz. I think it was entirely appropriate. Sunrise in the land of our King!

Entering the Promised Land!

We left Budapest on May 6th and bizarrely had to land at another airport to refuel on our way to Tel Aviv, Israel. Don't know what that was about. But we had stayed up pretty late the night before (I never went to sleep actually as I was busy blogging and then passed the "able to wake up to an alarm" point) so, we both slept through all of the flying and landing to refuel and then waiting on to take off again for quite a while drama! Thank goodness!

Here is the plane that landed us safely in the Promised land! (after a bizarre refueling stop) :O)

We then got a taxi to our hotel (which advertised an airport shuttle, but did not have one) where we settled in a bit and then went looking for the gym and pool that were the reasons we chose the hotel. We found them... well, we found the room formerly known as the gym and the pool formerly filled with water. So, we made arrangements to get a refund for the following night and made a reservation for the following night for a hotel within walking distance!

The second hotel was MUCH better! We spent the whole afternoon doing laundry and then had a good nights sleep before making our way back to the airport to meet up with Sandals for our tour!