I was fortunate enough to take the family across to Jordan last week and fortuitously recorded the route on my phone. I've now added the very scenic alternative route down to the Dead Sea that turns off the highway, runs through Jerash (looks like an interesting place where I'll likely return) and cuts across the valleys and finally follows the valley that supplied the Dead Sea with its water.

I also added the hotel where we stayed... the Kimpinski. It's very posh, but it's off season at the moment so there's some excellent deals to be had if you fancy pampering yourself for a few days!

Although I was initially a bit frustrated that there's little map data available for this region of the Middle East, I have to say there's something quite satisfying about adding several hundred kilometers of uncharted road systems... you don't get that opportunity in Europe any more!

Someone beat me to it adding the road to Karak from the Dead Sea Highway, although I did get to add a bit of road in the town and add will add the restaurant that we ate at. I also added a petrol station just before Karak, which is why we turned off the Dead Sea Highway in the first place, as there aren't many places to fill up with fuel along that road!

It's kind of amusing reviewing the route like this... sign posting isn't that great around here so I find I often end up taking an alternative route, which becomes very evident when making the GPS tracks.

There was a section of Kings Highway missing that I've joined... probably only just been built? I have to say that the final section of Kings Highway to Wadi Musa (and Petra) is a fantastic stretch of road... very impressed with Jordan's civil engineers and their banking of the roads. However, it looks like someone has been using the aerial photography to add these highways since they're a bit coarse? This could do with a bit of tidying up, but I'll leave that to those making the maps in Jordan to utilise my GPS data. I've added the main road through Wadi Musa to the entrance of Petra and added a couple of hotels.

I had planned on tracking my walks around Petra, but for some reason my phone was playing up and the SportsTracker software kept falling out with the bluetooth GPS. In hindsight it may have been because the phone was in my pocket and getting too hot and sticky. I did get a bit of track recorded though and a great walk back through Wadi Muslam (or something similar). This includes a very narrow wadi where obviously my GPS struggled to pick up a signal some time, so the track I've traced is a little coarse.

I tried to track the drive from Petra to Amman, but half way there I again had trouble with my phone rebooting itself, I think due to some bugs in Nokia Maps 3.0 that I've been trying out (which actually has a few of the main roads in Syria and Jordan, although the routing is currently terrible). I did manage to get the rest of the journey from Amman to Damascus captured though.

I added the large Carrefour supermarket where we stopped for a shop... I wanted to add the mall but can't find a key for that? I was also able to join up Highway 35, the west ring road around Amman.

I joined up the main road through Al-Ramtha and the same for Dera (got confused driving through there at night, but did get to find a petrol station as a result).

So, quite a successful trip overall!