I LOVE the Desert!!

The past six weeks I have spent traveling and visiting friends. One of my goals before I left Israel/Palestine was to hike in the Negev Desert. Therefore, I dragged two of my friends from Sabeel, Peter and Clayton, to enjoy a hiking and camping trip. We traveled to Mitspe Ramon, a town in the middle of the Negev Desert in Israel and hiked in the Makhtesh Ramon. The Makhtesh Ramon is often thought to be a crater created by a meteor millions of years ago, but in fact it is a canyon created by erosion (A fact I just learned from Wikipedia :) ). Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Negev desert was covered by an ocean. When this ocean receded, erosion created the crater looking canyon of Makhtesh Ramon.

Please enjoy these pictures and comments from our trip. The pictures are all courtesy of Peter who was our resident camera man for the weekend.


We rented a car for the ride down.


A Beautiful sunset on the way down.


Our campsite. I love sleeping without a tent here!


Waking up to the sunset at 5:30 in the morning. Although we didn't sleep that much that night, which allowed us to enjoy a SPECTACULAR array of Stars.



The three of us.


We begin our journey at the crack of dawn and the desert is covered with flowers.



Shadows in the morning light.


We reach the canyon in the morning light.





Exploring a ridge before descending into the canyon.


Descending into the canyon. Following the signs that point the way.


I was surprised to see so many flowers in the desert.




My favorite!


Black basalt rocks covered one part of the canyon. These rocks are thought to come from volcanic activity.


Making our way through a basalt valley.


One minute the desert is covered with flowers. The next it looks completely barren.



We ascended Mount Ido covered with some sort of rock formations.



Enjoying the view from Mt. Ido.


Friends since the beginning. Peter was the first person I met when he came to pick me up at the airport over a year ago.


After lunch, we were so tired, but we still had about 8 km to our car. Luckily Peter hitch-hiked to our car and attempted to bring it back to us. After Peter left, Clayton and I head out on the long, long road hoping that we would see Peter in the car any minute. After about one hour, we finally saw Peter, but with no car. Because the road was so bad, our little rental car could not make it all the way. Here we are when he met us. We look like we have a lot more stamina than we actually had.



FINALLY!! We made it to the car, looking a little more tired, like we actually are.


Following the road home, we drove through a military shooting range. Such irony that exists in Israel: Awesome natural beauty, right next to a military base.


We were planning to camp another night, but our tiredness led us to go back and stay in Jerusalem. We enjoyed some hummus and a lovely sunset in a park near Bet Shemesh.