For two straight days now we have started at one sea and ended up at another.

Yesterday it was from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea and today it was on to the Sea of Galilee.

It has been a long day and now that I have taken a nap, I will share some pictures before I turn in for the night. I only have time for a brief overview of the day as we visited quite a few places.

Here is the view from my hotel room this morning. The sun has risen and is shining across the Dead Sea.

After breakfast we headed off to Masada. Here is a view of the Northern Palace area. It gives you an idea of how rugged of an area Masada is located in.

Here part of our group stands in the breech point where the Romans finally broke onto the top of Masada. Would you have had the courage to stand here and defy the Romans?

As we passed through Ein Gedi on the way north we saw a flock of Ibex among the palm trees. If you would like to see a closer view of one of these magnificent animals click on A Close Look at an Ibex.

We had lunch at Qumran after taking a quick tour of the site. Here you can see Cave 4 where some of the scroll fragments were found.

We only made a quick stop at Jericho. Our main mission was to see the walls that fell after Joshua marched around the city.

We arrived at Beit Shean just after they closed, but the park personnel were nice and let us at least take pictures from the entrance area.

The city of Beit Shean was up on the tel, and it was here that Saul and his sons were posted to Beit Shean’s wall.

Below the tel is the first century city of Scythopolis which was one of the cities of the Decapolis.

We then made a stop at Jezreel which is full of history. From here we had a great view of the valley and also of the Spring of Jezreel. The spring is where the group of trees are. Just to the right of the trees you can see some black tarps. This is an active dig site that I have been following. See Dig Watch.

After we arrived at our hotel I took a walk down to the shore and took a picture of some of the boats on the Sea of Galilee.

We will be spending some time in this area and will be visiting some very interesting sites during the next few days.

Keep tuned.

Steven