On the way to Masada

These pictures show some of the caves near Qumran. The place is about a mile from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea.

Question: What is important about this place?

Answer: Dead Sea Scrolls. Remember?

At the Jordan River, front story

It's a long walk from the bus to the river.

The Jordan. Remember?

The path is good, but it has curves and dips and rises and a few turnoffs. Ann took one of the turnoffs. I think there was a sign on that turnoff--RESTROOM--and that was of interest to Ann. I kept walking, slowly, knowing that Ann would easily catch up with me.

About a hundred yards down the path, when she didn't come, I stopped, deciding just to wait for her. She shouldn't be much longer.

I waited another ten minutes. No Ann. I wondered if she had found another way to the river, so I went on quickly. Quickly because the path turned and there was a rise about 300 yards ahead, and once over that rise, Ann, if she was still behind me, would not see me.

She was not at the river.

I went back. Traced my steps along the path, waited again, asked the last few in our group who were coming along, but no one had see Ann. This was familiar.

After another ten minutes I began to worry. I mean, how could she get lost here? But clearly, she was not coming. I went back to the turnoff, took it, and followed that path a long way, calling her name. She did not respond. I saw no restroom, and I saw no Ann.

I went back to the river. Lindsey (the young Fun For Less rep who traveled with us, actually the daughter of the owner) asked if something was wrong. "I can't find my daughter. I've been back and forth and do not find her. She turned off back there, but I've been there and she isn't there."

"Go sit down," Lindsey said, clearly not concerned. "I'll find her."

Obviously, Lindsey has no children. Like I could go just sit down and relax by the Jordan. Like, yeah, sure. I did go to the river. Michael was lecturing. I didn't sit down. I kept turning around, looking. I couldn't pay attention, didn't know what he was saying. I left.

I went back to the path and began another search. Lindsey was out there, but I didn't even know if she knew what Ann looked like.

I cannot know how long all this took, too long. I told myself that my fears were irrational. Ann is an adult; people on tours don't get lost. But I was worried anyway.

Of course, I was praying.

Back to the river, then back to the path, and this time, when I came up the rise, there was Ann walking toward me, not alone and not on the main path.

Jay Wallace and his wife

I didn't know the man who walked with her.  But I know him now. He's Jay. I know that at that moment he looked very good to me. He had found Ann.

We hugged--Ann and I. She had indeed been lost. This time she knew it and was very glad to be found. I could see the relief on her face. Maybe she could see the same on my face.

We went to the river. Michael was nearly finished speaking. We took pictures. I felt good.

See how good Ann looks.

The very last night of our tour, the night before we took off for home, eight of us ate together at the Cinco de Mayo restaurant in our Amman, Jordan hotel. The Shorts, the four Johnsons, Ann and her mother, and Jay and his wife. Halfway through dinner I said to Jay, "You will always be my hero."

"Oh? Why is that? he asked.

I pointed to Ann and said, "Because you found Ann." He shook his head and laughed. Ann laughed.

"You don't understand, Mom," she told me. "He didn't find me. We found each other and just stuck together. We were both lost."

At the Jordan River, back story

When Ann was between two and three years old, I lost her in Orem, Utah's University Mall. It was a big mall, 135 stores. Trust me, I know. We had been on BYU campus, been to the MTC to see her big brother Wayne, and thought we'd spend some time at the mall.

We went in to Mervyn's together, I spoke to a salesperson, turned around and Ann was gone.

It had only been a moment, she couldn't be far from where I stood, but I was frightened. She was a cute little blond girl, and people were snatching little blond girls in the early 1980s. I asked the salesperson if she had seen where my little daughter went. No.

I went all through that store, asking anyone. No.

Mervyn's was at one end of the mall. Just outside its entrance was a toy store. That must be where she went. I went in, looked. No Ann.

Then I started a frantic search of the mall. Every store, every inch, calling her name when I could make myself say it. I do not know what I looked like, my face, but I was holding back tears. And I asked people had they seen her. No.

Back the other way through the mall. No.

Back into Mervyn's. I asked the woman who had been helping me if I could have an announcement in the mall. She said I could have it announced over the loudspeaker in the store, but I'd have to find the mall office to get something throughout the mall. So I started in Mervyn's, describing Ann and what she was wearing. They announced it, but it was no help.

Through the mall again. Many people. But no Ann. And I did not find the mall office.

I did not know what to do. We didn't live in Utah. We had no cell phones yet. No way to get help from anyone in Utah or at home in Idaho.  I thought about calling the police or at least mall police. Okay, I'm pretty independent, pretty convinced nothing bad should ever happen to us (you know), but this was bad, and I was ready for that. It had been a long time now, and she was just gone.

Yes, I was praying with every step, every breath. And by now I could hardly breathe for fear.

Then, on one of those whispered messages we sometimes get, a hunch people might call it, I went for the third time into the toy store. I went down every aisle, trying to smile at the guy who worked there but not able to. I think I said something to him the first time I went in. Had he seen a little blond girl? No.

And she was there, squatting down in a corner, looking at something important, I'm sure. I suppose she had been there all along, but my searches had taken nearly an hour. That's a long time for a two-year old to stay anywhere.

When I saw her, I collapsed onto my knees, gathered her up and cried and laughed. Ann did not know that anything out of the ordinary had happened. When I had recovered enough, we went back into Mervyn's so I could tell the now very worried salesperson I had found my Ann. We held hands from then on.

The Dead Sea, residual

That's the thing, or one of them. After you swim in the Dead Sea, you want and need to get the scummy feeling off of your skin.

Hard to do. Two showers didn't quite.

Then, there are the swim clothes you wore, including water shoes, which for me were my Keen sandals. Maybe it's the salt, but the clothes never really dried. I ended up putting them in a plastic bag and using them for padding in my suitcase to keep the olive oil secure, the olive oil I bought from Mahmoud. When I got home, that was the first thing I did--get those clothes into the washer with some good old Tide.

In Amman I washed my shoes and carried them wet into Israel. Finally, after three days and nights, they felt dry enough to wear again.

These are things you'll need to remember when you go to Israel and swim in the Dead Sea.

You are going. Right?

This was Friday, the 13th

Can you guess where this is?  See number 2, below.

We spent a night in Amman before crossing into Israel. (I said I wasn't exactly going in order.) I have a picture from our hotel room, looking out upon a beautiful city, nothing like what we saw out the windows in Cairo.

Maybe you can't see it here, but the city was gleaming white. And clean.

However, before we laid our heads on Jordanian pillows, we visited two important places, seeing them from the Jordanian side.

1. The Jordan River, perhaps near where Jesus was baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist. You will note the color of the water, and perhaps you will notice the people on Israel's side of the river. They are baptizing themselves. That is what appeared to me to be happening. They looked very happy.

I know that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, near Jericho. This place is near Jericho. Somehow, it does not matter to me whether or not we can know the exact spot. I do think about the joy of the two men that day, and we have the record of this event in all four gospels, what they said and what happened. (See Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:29-34.)

"I saw the mighty Jordan roll" was not written about this place. The water hardly moves at all.
Either that or the person who wrote the song never went to Israel.

Here we are together at the Jordan. Next trip to Israel I'll take better clothes. I think. Trouble was that you couldn't always tell which day to wear grubbies and which to wear something decent.

2. The Dead Sea. I have many pictures of that water from the bus and from Masada, but I couldn't take pictures while in the water. Floating, of course. You can't do much else. It's so buoyant that walking is a challenge. Here's what you do in the Dead Sea: Walk in, lean forward a little, sit down. Then, when you want to get out, have someone, or two someones, help you stand up.

Thanks to Brian for this picture. I know right where I am, too.

A bus is a bus, but you could be wrong about that

I think I want my old blog design back, but I don't know how to get it. Google has made things more difficult for me. Is that age? Or is it Google messing around with something when they didn't need to?

In the meantime, I will say that we left Egypt by air, and flew back to Amman, Jordan.

There we boarded a bus so that we could cross into Israel. Which crossing took nearly three hours. We waited on the bus a long time. Eventually, we were allowed to gather our luggage and wait in line to be looked over individually. They're careful.

In Israel we were privileged to occupy Mahmoud's beautiful bus. That'll be the day, I might have said, when I lavish praise on a bus. But this was not just any bus. And we did not simply ride it from here to there for fifteen minutes and be done, ta da. No. We were on that bus a lot. Every day. Get it?

And here it is with a beautiful girl standing by it.

Perhaps you can see it is a Mercedes Benz. What you can't see is that it is spotless, clean, sweet-smelling. And what you don't know, yet, is that Mahmoud is determined to keep it that way.

No ice cream bars on the bus. Only water to drink on the bus. Brush ALL sand from your feet after your dip in the Mediterranean Sea. Put all trash in the plastic bags Mahmoud has placed throughout the bus. And, goes without saying, no smoking.

I heard a grumble or two, but, after all, it is Mahmoud's bus. And we later learned that Mahmoud's bus is what we wanted. But I guess he could not go into Jordan.

I don't know the name of the last driver we had, but I know he smoked. So did Waled, our Jordanian guide who I'd just as soon "kind of" forget, "I'm just trying to tell you." No, they didn't smoke on the bus but right outside the door as soon as we parked. And I can guarantee that our driver had smoked on the bus, like night and day.

And this bus . . . well, it simply did not measure up. To be brief:  It stank. Double what you're thinking here. The windows were dirty. The whole bus was filthy so that you did not want to touch anything. Double what you're thinking again. Gross is a good word for it.

See? Mahmoud knew best. And not every bus is Mahmoud's bus.

And we ate at Macaroni Grill and Baskin-Robbins

Adjacent to our Intercontinental City Stars Hotel in Cairo was a mall. A fancy, beautiful, very big mall, frequented by rich people, not the people we saw as we drove through the streets of Cairo.

Wael told us that in Egypt there are only two classes of people now: very rich and very poor. The middle class is disappearing, going down. That is what's happening to Wael. Once middle class, he's going down. He cannot find enough work. His education prepared him to be a tour guide, which he does very well. But since last year's revolution, tourism--upon which the country depends heavily--is way down. With numbers like, before-12 million visitors per year, after-1 million.

The people we saw in this mall have money and time to spend it.

Here is a picture of one wall near a mall entrance.

It was in this mall that we saw our favorite T-shirt. A guy passed us wearing it, and we asked each other, "What does that mean?"

Just four words, but they proved useful to us from time to time. But I'll let Ann tell the four words.