A Mountain Road from the Dead Sea Highway to Amman
After our final resort-and-explore day, we headed back to Amman via Mukawir and Madaba. As I mentioned in the previous blog, geomorphology in Jordan is fantastic. Folds, faults, hot springs, grabens, lava flows...the region is filled with textbook examples. The drive from the Dead Sea highway to Madaba via Mukawir (Highway 817) is quite the road. Go here , and look at the road just below the Balqua-Madaba Governates line (it should be the center of the map). That’s the road we drove—a zig-zagging road with a handful of 8% grades, but also a couple 15% grades. No typo. Fifteen-percent grades (I almost titled this entry “15%”). As we were driving up one of the steeper grades, my father-in-law said, “I can see why the King likes to ride motorcycles…this would be fun!” Indeed. It would be a great place to have a bike. We passed four or five cars on the entire road to Mukawir. A lonely, deserted, but well-maintained road. And in the center of it all, Ma’in hot springs resort with a hot, ...