Traveling Adventures Hi! Welcome to my travel journal. I created this so friends and family can keep track of me on my adventures. I'll update this when I can.

we headed out of aqaba on the morning of the 5th to reach wadi rum, a desert just north of the coast.  on our way we could see across the jordan-israel border again to the town of elat.  it is so strange to be seeing all these places you hear about in the news!  another thought we had when we entered jordan was that we are now in a country that borders iraq.  that is really surreal to us.  anywho, we drove about an hour or so to the entrance of the wadi rum protected area.  wadi rum is a sandstone and granite desert/canyon/valley and is best known for its connection with T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) who fought the Ottoman empire during WWI.  it is also a big climbing destination and we spotted several groups on the walls and walking around looking for routes.  we were extremely jealous of course.  oh and part of return of the jedi was filmed here (i think this area was jaba the hut's palace).  wadi rum is currently home to a tribe of bedouin who acted as our desert guides.  the valley was also an important travel corridor for early christian cultures.  when we arrived at the visitor center, we were transferred to 4x4 jeeps and headed off into the desert.  the cliffs in wadi rum really reminded us of the rock around moab and mon and i were definitely having spring break flashbacks.  we stopped to chech out some 2000 year petroglyphs of camels and horses and gazelles and had our first taste of bedouin cardamnom (spelling?) tea which was delicious of course.  next we headed out to a slot canyon with little water pools (very similar to tanks for those with us in capitol reef nat park) and some incredible petroglyphs of people, feet and gazelles or ibexes.  according to our jordanian guide (you will hear more about him later), these petroglyphs were all about 2000-3000 years old although our lonely planet book said most were 10000-30000 years old.  we next visited a sandstone arch about 80 off the ground.  there was a pretty easy scramble to get up to it so a few of us had our pictures taken standing on the arch.  we had a bit of difficulty getting up the sand hill to it in the jeep though- our driver kept stalling in the sand and then the main leader (his dad) yelled at him and he was demoted to passenger for the remainder of the trip after finally making it up the hill.  we offered to push the jeep, but he wasnt too sure about girls doing that...  after the arch we headed through a valley of massive zion-style walls and stopped at a giant orange sand dune.  having been cooped up most of the day in the jeeps, we spilled out of the cars, kicked our shoes off and ran up the hill (it took a long time and we were thoroughly tired afterwards to the delight of our drivers).  the dunes are really fun to jump and run down so we played there for a while.  from here we headed out into the middle of the desert for our bedouin camp.  it was a series of black camel hair tents with the standard carpets around the eating area.  it was in a natural amphitheater of sandstone cliffs and was really isolated and so quiet.  there was this perfect point of rock hanging over above the sand and we sat there for the sunset (which is about 445pm here).  i discovered a great little 3 move bouldering problem with a roof so we took turns on that for a bit.  i tried some other decent looking problems but after having three holds break and fall in dust clouds on my head, we gave up on that.  right as the sun set, the desert got really quiet and all the redrock turned a rosy pink color.  combined with the orange and rose colored sand, it was a spectacular sunset.  we headed back to our camp as it got dark for a bedouin dinner.  they cooked chicken, potatoes and onions in pots buried under the sand under a fire.  it was great!  they also had a vegetable tangine and rice and bread of course.  for dessert our trip leader produced 4 bags of marshmallows.  mon and i basically fell over with excitement.  we have been craving marshmallows for the whole trip!  after about 10 smores, we all reclined on carpets and mats and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.  they provided tents for sleeping, but mon, marshall, shannon, and i decided to sleep outside so we could see the stars.  we were hoping to see some syrian wolves, which frequent the campsite, but weren't lucky enough.  we got up bright and early to head to petra.