Descent to the Dead Sea

After Bet Shean we loaded on the bus for a long drive south. Leaving the lush terrain behind, we watched the hills turn into mountains and cliffs, and grass turn into sand. We were heading for the one and only Dead Sea. While we were driving, I noticed there must have been hundreds of green houses, the farther we drove I decided there were thousands of green houses and the longer we drove I finally assumed there were millions of green houses in this little country. Plus, there were millions of orchards; you name it, they grew it. Dates were very popular; each tree produced an average of 500 pounds per tree…did I mention there were millions of trees? The Lord has truly blessed this country’s agriculture. The closer we got to the Dead Sea the saltier the dirt got. Every twenty years, the farmers will “flood” the land to wash the dirt clean of the salt. In some areas, farmers dug down twelve feet and laid cement slabs down, put the dirt back and then planted their trees; this prevents the salt from coming up so they would not need to flood the earth. If they would not go to these extents, then the salt would burn the roots and the trees would die. We stopped briefly at a little museum and saw some of the actual Dead Sea scrolls.  Moving on, we arrived at our five star hotel that had its own private beach on the sea. That evening, we went down to go swimming but the water was to rough and we were not allowed to swim, so we waited until morning. In the meantime, the hotel had a normal outside pool and an indoor/outdoor pool of saltwater. We floated! It took great stomach strength to keep our legs underneath us. After we played around awhile, some of us went into the normal pool. It was so wired to go from sinking to floating and floating to sinking. We enjoyed a huge buffet for supper, one of the best meals we ate while in Israel. And tomorrow, a few of us would tackle the Dead Sea itself.