A trip to the Dead Sea and Jordan River

Hello,

This morning I stayed in camp, in part because I banged my knee yesterday. It is not that serious but to be safe, I took it "easy" today. This is how it looks when our buses leave each morning at 4:30AM.


This is the view from the window of my room at the Karak Rest House. It looks out over the Wadi Karak which leads down to the Dead Sea. Dr. John Foss invited me to go with him today into the Great Rift Valley. He was headed to the King Hussein Bridge at the Jordan River. He was going to pick up Valdecy DaSilva who spent two days visiting Jerusalem. We headed out about 8:30AM.

This is the view today on the busy streets of Karak.


Karak was a castle town in the medieval period so that means that there are limited routes in and out of the city. This is a view of Karak castle from the wadi Karak. You can see the Rest House in the upper left of the picture.

As we headed down to the Dead Sea, we dropped greatly in elevation. The Dead Sea is the lowest spot on the face of the earth with an elevation of 1378 feet below sea level. Karak's elevation is about 3050 feet above sea level. So we dropped in elevation about 4400 feet in a distance of about 30 miles.

We stopped briefly at the sign along the road that marks the point of sea level.

Here I am at sea level today.


Later we drove along the Dead Sea heading north towards the bridge.

I quickly took this picture of out the car window, it is where the Wadi Mujib (pictured in Friday's blog) meets the Dead Sea.



The drove to the bridge and picked up Valdecy DaSilva, pictured here at the Jordan River. We decided that since we were very close to the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River that we would stop for a visit.

This marks the spot where it is believed that Jesus was baptized, in the background are the ruins of the Church of John the Baptist.

This site became known after the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel in the 1990's. It is believed to be the site of Bethany beyond the Jordan mentioned in John 1:28.

I visited the site in 2001 about when it first was opened. There have been two papal visits to the site, once in 2000, and one about a month ago. This has brought a great deal of attention to the site and changes at the site. The Jordanian governments expects and hopes that this will become a site that will draw many visitors every year.

Here you see the ruins of the Church of John on the left with the tradition site of baptismal place of Jesus in the background.

This is the Jordan River from a view place along the trail to the Church of John.


Here I am at Jordan river today, I was surprised that you could travel into this military zone, in fact I was only about 15 feet from Israeli controlled territory while standing here. So much has changed here since I first visited in 2001.


The Israelis are building a place for tourists to come to be baptized much like the one that is located near the Sea of the Galilee in the north.


Many churches are being built near this site, here is a Greek Orthodox church with a gold covered dome. All of these churches have been built in the last 8 years, and several are currently under construction.

We drove back to Karak on the Desert Highway and arrived in time for the end of pottery reading. Before dinner we had a brief church service.

Tomorrow I go back to the site at 4:30AM so I better get to bed.

John Wineland
Karak, Jordan