Jordan & Petra

We just got back from Jordan, and loved every minute of it. I was really excited to go to Egypt, and I had some high expectations and kind of knew what to expect, but Jordan totally surprised me. Looking at the big picture of things, I think Petra has been my favorite site that we have visited thus far. Most of you probably know Petra from the third Indiana Jones movie. I thought that the temple that holds the Holy Grail, the treasury in real life, was all there really is to Petra, but that building really only scratches the surface. There is a monastery that is very similar in building to the treasury, and the monestary is a 987 step hike, that has ancient steps carved into the rocks part of the way up. It was awesome! The picture above is me and Erica in awe.

In addition to these two well know sites are some other massive tombs where we spent all afternoon exploring and hiking in and out of. We could climb all over in, around and on top of them, it was awesome just to explore and climb! The best way to describe it is Southern Utah with an ancient history twist. I absolutely loved it. Anyone and everyone that ever gets out to this side of the world should never miss Petra.

This is the canyon you walk through to get to the treasury, and the rest of Petra.

These are the 987 steps you climb to get to the monastery. Such an awesome hike!

This is what we climbed up those 987 stairs to get to...worth it? Maybe? It was way awesome. You could get down right in front of it and climb inside too. Most of them only had one big room, despite what we see in Indiana Jones.


This is one of the tombs along the canyon opening. This is one that we climbed all around and over. It was awesome. Once you get into the ruin, there are a bunch of random partial staircases on the cliff that we went exploring on.