Touring Israel-Masada, Dead Sea and Qumran

Now that my classes have ended I'm spending a few days traveling around Israel. On Sunday I went to Masada, the Dead Sea and Qumran.
Masada (Hebrew מצדה, pronounced Metzada, from מצודה, metzuda, "fortress") is a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel on top of an isolated rock plateau, or large mesa, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada used to be used for military induction ceremonies, but today it is more often used as a Bar/Bat Mitzvah site for families who are visiting Israel. I was interested to learn that most of the physical damage to the buildings had been caused by earthquakes.
The Dead Sea (Hebrew: יָם הַמֶּלַח, Yām Ha-Melaḥ, "Sea of Salt" Arabic: البَحْر المَيّت, al-Baḥr El-Mayyit, "Dead Sea") is a salt lake with Jordan to the east and the West Bank and Israel to the west. Its surface and shores are 422 metres (1,385 ft) below sea level,[3] the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface on dry land. The Dead Sea is 378 m (1,240 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7% salinity. It is 8.6 times as salty as the ocean. This salinity makes for a very harsh environment where animals are unable to live.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets.
Blog Activity: Why do you think it's called the Dead Sea?
Qumran, חירבת קומראן, is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank, just next to the Israeli kibbutz of Kalia. The site was most likely constructed sometime during or before the reign of John Hyrcanus, 134-104 BCE and saw various phases of occupation until, probably after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the hiding place of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of the sheer desert cliffs.
Since the discovery in 1947 of nearly 900 scrolls in various states of completeness, mostly written on parchment, extensive excavations of the settlement have been undertaken. Cisterns, possibly a few Jewish ritual baths, and cemeteries have been found, along with a dining or assembly room and debris from an upper story alleged by some to have been a scriptorium as well as pottery kilns and a tower.
Blog Activity: Find the story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and draw a picture illustrating the story.