Holiday Hike

Happy President's Day - we got a three-day weekend and we headed off to Petra with two friends. Yes, I (Duffy) have been there a zillion times but a new truism is that Congressmen don't hike (or not in Jordan they don't.) So while I have walked "the main drag" of Petra a lot - neither Dan nor I had done any of the hikes off of the main walkway. On Friday we headed to the High Place of Sacrifice (there is also a low place of sacrifice and no doubt we would be less sore if we had settled for the low spot.) Dan and I both chickened out at the last 15 yards - the wind was howling and you need to scramble up a really tall boulder to get onto a precipice to look at the valley and we felt like we had seen the valley enough. Rick and Olivia made it the last bit and Dan and I chatted with an Austrian couple who like us decided that getting nearly to the High Place was high and safe enough.

Proof that Rick made it:

On the second day, we hiked up to "the Monastary" - which isn't (nor was never) a monastary but was a tomb like all of the big carvings in Petra. We then hiked a bit further to look at views into the valley. Multiple shop-keepers had set up signs from the Monastary reading "view" and then as we got further there was competition for which "view" since each shop-keeper had claimed a rock to set up a tea-shop/souvineer stand.

We then hiked back down the hill and made the unwise decision of driving the 3 hours home. I think we were all doubly sore on Sunday (the next day) because of the combination 2 days of hiking followed immediately by a car ride. So we spent Sunday doing very little (except being sore) - organizing tax records, writing thank you notes, watching 24. We are up to the middle of season 4 - where Turks who speak Arabic are threatening the US - yes this is the plotline for nearly every season of 24 although sometimes it is eastern Europeans - oh but wait Turks are eastern Europeans now.