with masada climbed, the sunrise captured and the descent completed by the late morning, we continued northbound to reach home base in north tel aviv. we opted to take the 90 northbound, so that effectively we had made a circuitous route from home base and back within the span of about a week or so.

the dead sea is not as i had remembered it from a visit some 23 years prior. the shoreline was virtually inaccessible this time around. i had hoped to get close to the water as we had on that previous trip, alas it was not meant to be… i believe the statistics say that the dead sea has lost approximately 1/6 of its surface area in the past 20 or so years.

nevertheless, there were a few stops for photo ops made on our return trip from southern israel: this is a photo of an acacia tree along the ‘shores’ of the dead sea somewhere between ein gedi and mitzpe shalem along the 90.

this photograph can be found in the following gallery: flowers, plants & trees