Author: David Moss

Sumpter is in Baker County, Oregon. Founded in 1889, Sumpter was a gold mining town. A narrow gauge railroad was built to bring supplies to the town. Sumpter is home to one of the largest floating gold dredges in the United States.

We are currently in Baker City, Oregon. We drove on the Hell’s Canyon Scenic Byway to the end of the road at Hell’s Canyon Dam. The canyon is the deepest gorge in North America. The original inhabitants of the Canyon was the Nez Perce tribe who were hunter-gathers. The Canyon was formed by the Snake River. Dams were placed on the river for power generation.

We visited Chloride, Arizona, along with our friend Jay, which is an old mining town founded in 1863. It is in Mojave County, Arizona about 23 miles north of Kingman, Arizona on the Hualapai Reservation. It is still inhabited by about 200 people. Silver, gold and lead were mined here. The town is old and aside from some of the older buildings, it was very small. We went to the murals painted on the rocks about 3 miles out of town and we eventually drove on a four-wheel- drive road to look for a water fall. We drove through several small streams but we could not find the water fall.

Tuzigoot is outside Clarkdale, Arizona near Sedona. It was built between 1000 and 1400. In some places it is two stories tall and has about 87 rooms. It is located on a ridge about 120 feet high overlooking the Verde Valley.

We are currently at the Distant Drums RV Resort in Camp Verde near Sedona, Arizona. The RV park is owned and operated by the Yavapai-Apache Nations, and is rated as one of the top RV parks in Arizona. Today we visited two National Monument; Montezuma Well National Monument and Montezuma’s Castle National Monument.

Montezuma Well

Montezuma’s Castle

We are back on the road again. We spent a wonderful Christmas with Barbara and Joel. We arrived in Holbrook yesterday with the intent of going to the Petrified Forest today, but snow changed our plans. We are staying one additional day due to a snow storm in Flag Staff. Today we went to the Navajo Museum in Holbrook. Tomorrow we will go to the forest and on Wednesday we will go to Sedona to visit our cousins Rick and Jason.

Today, Thursday, 10/13, is day two of our two stay in Jerusalem. We took a 9 hour leisurely tour of Jerusalem. We saw Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Annunciation, a Jewish cemetery which had been desecrated by the Arabs and rebuilt by the Jews in 1948, and the Western Wall which has a side for men and a side for women.

The Western Wall is a very holy place where you pray and add a piece of paper with a personal pray into a crevice in the wall.

The tour company had about eight or more different tours in Jerusalem. They took us to a beautiful hotel where we had an excellent buffet lunch.

Wednesday, 10/12, was Jerusalem day one of two. The ship docked in the port of Ashdod. We took a shuttle to the city.

As we didn’t have any planned shore excursion for the morning, we hired a taxi and went to the Dead Sea. The driver took us the back way which was spectacular. The eroded rock dirt formations were beautiful. We felt the water which is so smooth. It is 30% salt as well as potassium, magnesium, calcium and other minerals. It is the lowest place on Earth at 400 meters below sea level.

In the evening we were on an excursion that took us to Tel Aviv. It is a non secular city. It is fun and lively. We had a wonderful dinner.

Today, 10/11, we arrived in Haifa, Israel. We were met by retired Israeli police officers and members of the International Police Association (IPA) who took us on a tour of Haifa, Nazareth and other places including a Druid village. They brought us to another IPA member who owns a restaurant and fed us a meal fit for a king. Judy even drank an espresso after lunch.

In Nazareth we went to: the beautiful Basilica of the Annunciation where Mary went to cleanse herself; the Church of Joseph; and the Synagogue Church where Jesus went to pray. Jesus jumped out of the Synagogue and down a hill to get away from people who were going to kill him.

In Akka (sp) we saw where Napoleon left behind his sick and injured soldiers when he retreated to Turkey.

In Haifa we saw the San Francisco Observatory. San Francisco is Haifa’s sister city. We saw all the ports including one built by China. Up on a hill we could see where Lebanon and Syria.