A hike through the desert

A blog post by Melissa. Today we went on one of the most amazing hikes of our lives. Although it was rated "extremely difficult" we made it! The wind was howling through the canyons and any piece of sand that had a drop of water on it had a tiny little plant, but they were far and few between. It felt like walking on Mars. We climbed up to the top of a plateau then down its rocky cliff on the other side. We had great views of the Dead Sea and tried to imagine what it looked like even a hundred years ago when the sea was much bigger. Now that the Jordan River is dammed, the shores of the Dead Sea are receding and it is drying up. Once we got to the bottom of the plateau there was a warm stream running down the valley and all of a sudden there were birds singing, prairie dogs and lots more people. At the very beginning of our hike we saw an Ibex. I thought that since we saw one so soon there would be plenty of chances to take a picture of another one, but unfortunately we didn't see any more on the rest of our hike.