21 November ’04, Sunday. After a harsh wind and rain storm last night, we awoke to beautiful blue sky and lots of sunshine. The wind was still blowing enough that the flags on the boats were standing straight out, but the sun was out…. There was another small problem this morning, we didn’t have any electricity. The landlord said it would be 2pm before it would be restored, so we decided that the day would be best used by going for a road trip. We gathered all the travel books and maps of Turkey and sought out a location that would fit the day. The decision was made and we headed off for Milas. The Baltali Kapi (Gate with an Axe) and a Roman tomb dating from the 2nd century AD called Gumuskesen. Reading the directions we headed out the 50km (30 miles) to Milas. Now, we are normally good at reading these directions, but in this case we couldn’t find anything but a very nice looking town. Making a second run at it we came across a sign pointing to Labranda. Labranda was a holy place where the worship of God was going on by the 6th century BC. The road up was really interesting in it’s self. We knew we were out in the country and traveling the roads less traveled as we were the only one around. The road was just wide enough for one car (Bumble Bee), as it wound it’s way up the mountain side. It switched from having a shear drop on one side to the other all the way up. The scenery was absolutely some of the best we have seen. Beautiful rock formations, Pine trees of all varieties, bee hives scattered everywhere (this is the season that the “Bee Keepers” are living in their pitched tents near their hives and today we saw them in action tending the bee’s), and one mountain looking onto another as far as you could see. I know that my ears plugged a number of times as we were going up. When we reached Labranda, there was only 2 others at the site. They were local men that had ridden their motorbike up. As we walked up onto the site, we were just blown away with the ruins and the site that they occupied. There was the great Temple of Zeus, the Gates to a horse racing track (Olympic Games were held here), and two men’s banqueting halls where one of them was in pretty good shape, the First Andron and Second Andron. We also came across an incredible 4th century Tomb that had 3 sarcophagus inside. Like the other day when we saw the tomb, there was a huge cut stone door laying in front of the opening. Labranda was abandoned around 1000AD and it is surprising just how good the site looks today. We could tell that winter was just around the corner as it was cold as heck up there. We spent about 2 hours wandering around and enjoying Labranda before we turned “Bumble Bee” around and headed for home. Today was another great day in our book of “Great Days on Our Journey”.