Location: St Catherine

Ref: Journal

SHE SAID YES!

*ahem* Commentary, right.  So as I mentioned in the last comic, our trip for the most part did not go quite according to plan. Before we left, I had been nauseous; I chalked this up to a bit of anxiety about airports that has bothered me since my panic attack. I had some discomfort and bowel issues on the way, but by the time we had gotten to St Catherine I felt fine.  That first evening, we were talking to Mahmoud, the wonderful gentleman who had organized our trip for us.  I had gotten the impression that there weren’t many people who would be at the top of the mountain, but he told us there was usually 150-300.  I was planning on proposing up there, but I didn’t want to do it in front of that many people.  As we were sitting out on the patio of our lodge, we were just enjoying each other’s presence in the peace and quiet and the snails and I realized it would be the perfect place, so I decided I would propose the next evening.

On our way up the mountain, we discovered that numbers were way down due to some rain earlier, and I started considering the original plan.  The security guard checking backpacks pulled out the ring, but thankfully Meagan was looking the other way.  Then, the plan got aborted, and I realized it was not anxiety but an actual stomach bug.

After resting, I felt much better.  Meagan took a nap while I wrote in our journal, and this gave me the idea of how to spend our afternoon.  As we were reading the journal, I remembered that in her last entry she had evaluated the odds of me proposing at different times (at the time of writing, she had placed her trip to Egypt as the lowest odds), and I realized that would be my cue.  That part of the trip went beautifully, and we spent a few hours celebrating.

Then she got whammied by an intestinal parasite all night. Thankfully it let up long enough for us to get back home (we were really nervous about that taxi ride) before round two.  But hey, we had a few hours of bliss on this adventure where everything went right, and I’m so excited for our future life together!

Ref: St Catherine’s Monastery | Mt Sinai

Ah, this (mis)adventure! There’s a bit more of the story than I can feasibly do in the weekly comic, but I’ll save it for next week. As for this particular bit, we did not get to ascend to Mt Sinai as planned. I was out for the rest of the morning, but at least Meagan got to go see the monastery grounds.

The font in panel(?) 3 is Vaporized by Blambot, and it worked great.  The shadow started as an accident, but I really like it.

So as noted in this comic, I decided to take Meagan to Mt Sinai for part of her visit.  The first thing we both noticed was the QUIET.  SO QUIET.  This was especially nice for her, because she was not used to the clamoring ruckus that is Alex and found it a little overbearing.

To get to the mountain, we had to fly into Sharm El Sheikh, then a bedouin driver I had arranged for took us around the mountain range (there is no direct path) to the town of St Catherine.  The drive took about three hours, and only had one stop on the whole route. DESOLATE.  Luckily, aside from construction at one point the roads were good, and was actually four lane divided roadway for half of it. And note because I know someone will ask: the current conflicts are in North Sinai, we were in South Sinai, and there are several military checkpoints on the way and especially at the mountain. It was quite safe.

I was fascinated by the landforms.  I teach about unconformities, but I had never seen it so obvious and frequent in the landscape.  It was clear that the mountains had been pushed up at an angle, and the different types of rock eroded at different rates, which was neat as well.  I’ll be using that as an example for a long time!

But outside of geology? It’s a whole lotta NOTHING for miles. Very pretty nothing, but nothing nonetheless. I can’t imagine crossing this on foot.