A hike just south of Makhtesh Ramon

Today (8 October 2012) we drove up to just south of Makhtesh Ramon (the Ramon Crater), where I parked the car at the side of the road and took a short hike. The weather was beautiful, with warm sun, a cool breeze, and a few fluffy clouds in the sky. Also, it was about an hour to an hour and a half before sunset, which is a great time for photography. Here are some pictures that I took (all of them with my iPhone 4s).

For this first one, I hiked up near a small cliff (seen on the right) and took this view looking approximately northeast.

This second picture was taken near the same spot but looking a little more northward. The Makhtesh really begins just the other side of these hills.

In this final view, we are looking almost directly east towards two mesas. Somewhat closer, at the bottom of the picture, you can see our car (the red on on the left) and several others parked along highway 40 at the beginning of the trail I took.

Paran River flowing over highway 40

Yesterday (1 October) we were driving down highway 40 after having made a trip further north. When we go to נחל פראן Nakhal Paran (the Paran River), there was actually water in it, something we have never before seen. Since there's no bridge over the river (or even pipes under the road), the water just runs across the road. Luckily, it wasn't too deep to get across easily.

After we had crossed, I parked the car and got out to take some pictures. Here are a few of them. In the first picture, you can see kids wading in the muddy water and a northbound vehicle splashing across.

This is the view looking upstream (roughly towards the west). As you can see, more people were enjoying the water up there.

Here's a view of 2 cars going across the stream, one in each direction. The post at the right is a familiar sight all over this part of the country. It's for situations where the water is quite a bit deeper that this. The lowest black tag marks 0.5 meters, the next one 1 meter, and the top one 1.5 meters. I wouldn't even cross if it were near 0.5 meters (about 20 inches), since that might be enough to wash my car right off the road, I think.