A hike to Rosh Pinna with Carol

On Shabbat, our next-door neighbors, Shimon and Patricia, invited us to lunch at their house. Patricia's sister, Carol, was visiting from England. We had met her 6 months ago when she had visited them before, and we had taken an immediate liking to her. So we were glad to hear that she would be visiting again.

During lunch, Patricia and Carol told us that they had taken a short walk a little way down the nakhal near us. I told them that it was possible to walk all the way down to Rosh Pinna that way and that I had done it once. As we were sitting around and talking a bit after lunch, Carol mentioned that she would really like to take that hike, and I immediately agreed to walk with her. Nobody else really was interested in the hike, so just the 2 of us headed out.

First, we walked along the trail that is the extension of our road (after the pavement ends by our house). We passed through a V-shaped gate that keeps the cows from coming through, continued a little further, and then turned right on the jeep trail that heads down the nakhal.

Here are some of the things we saw along the way. First, a purple thistle, which is probably the most plentiful type of flower currently seen all over northern Israel:

Here's a beautiful black and white butterfly, obviously the same type that I had seen the day before at Park Adamit:

Here are some delicate, tiny white flowers:

Part way down the valley, we encountered several cows, including some that were in a sort of shallow cave on the left. Here, you can see a calf nursing. Of course, I used the zoom on my camera!

Most (if not all) of the cows had tags in their ears with numbers, but this one sported a PAIR of earrings! Aren't they fetching? :-)

We also saw a number of these interesting ball-shaped green thistles:

Here are some purple flowers that I saw which were just too lovely to pass up:

As we got near Rosh Pinna, we began to encounter trees, especially olive trees, that must have been planted by people at some point, although they seem to be pretty much growing wild now. This clump of small figs was one of hundreds that were on a very large fig tree (or maybe more than one -- it was hard to tell):

Here are some lovely lavender flowers that also may not actually be native to the area:

When we got to Rosh Pinna, we found a small restaurant right along the main road that comes down from Tsfat, just after it make its final sharp curve. We weren't hungry, but we WERE a bit thirsty, so we ordered "mint lemonades". Here's a nice picture of Carol with our mint lemonades in the foreground (they tasted as good as they look!):

For those of you who are curious, David drove down with the car, so that we did NOT have to walk all the way back UP the hill! That would have been WAY too much for either of us! :-)