Ash and Sandstorms

First glimpse of Treasury building through the narrow canyon
While Mt. Readout, about 100 miles southwest of our home in Anchorage, was spewing ash into the upper atmosphere, we were on a bus traveling through a sandstorm in Southern Jordan. If a snowstorm can is a white-out, ash fall-out is a grey-out then a sandstorm is a brown out. Fortunately I wasn’t driving so I didn’t have to cope with the reduced visibility on the road. The sandstorm left my throat feeling very dry, my lips tasted of sand and my eyes had bits of sand in the corners. My skin had a grainy coating. The sandstorm lasted about an hour, but it followed us to Eilat so that we experienced it later again that same night.


We (Chris, Hannah, Noah and myself) had spent the day walking through the carved sandstone of Petra, Jordan. Many people are familiar with Petra from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. While the Treasury building featured in the Indiana Jones movie is the first spectacular carving encountered after the 3 km hike down the narrow winding canyon, it is neither the largest nor the most elaborately carved facade. In Petra the two thousand year-old rock carvings amplify the geographic and geologic features exponentially. The only human-made site I’ve been to that is somewhat similar to Petra is Mesa Verde in Southwestern Colorado. However Petra is larger, older, and more detailed than Mesa Verde.

Treasury Building