ISRAEL: MASADA

On our final day in Israel, we made our way south to the eastern Israel-Egypt border crossing. The further south we went, the drier it got. The terrain was not so different from the southern Nevada desert, a stretch of highway I've driven through many, many times:

On the west side of the road there were barren mesas and sand dunes:

. . . and on the east side was the Dead Sea:

Earlier in our trip we had seen Herod the Great's palace-fortress in Caesarea, overlooking the jewel-like Mediterranean and cooled by ocean breezes. Our last stop was going to be another of Herod's palace-fortresses, the famous site Masada.

Masada was built by the Hasmoneans on the top of a mesa in the driest, most inhospitable of climates, the eastern Judaean desert. About 100 years later, in 37-31 BC, Herod had it fortified so he could use it as a refuge in case he had to escape from a Jewish revolt. Herod died in 4 BC, and in 66 AD the revolt he had feared did happen, and Jewish extremists called the Sicarii captured Masada and established their own fortress there. When the Romans seized Jerusalem and destroyed the temple four years later, many Jews fled to Masada.

Masada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most popular tourist sites in Israel.