I took a total of 143 pictures on the trip. Of those, there were a few that were out of focus, which I discarded. However, that still leaves WAY too many pictures to post. I picked out 29 of the best, cropped most of them to feature the most interesting part, and saved in at lower resolution. Finally, I selected the 20 best of those, and I'm posting them here for your enjoyment.
We drove up the Gamla road from the Kinneret, and I stopped at a bus stop, where there was room to pull over and park the car, and took the first group of pictures. Here's one of those pictures, featuring a bee doing her work on a nice yellow flower:
Here's a gorgeous red kalanit, which I just couldn't resist photographing:
And here are a couple of beautiful white daisies:
These flowers are interesting because, as you can see, their color seems to vary between purplish-blue and pinkish-purple:
This close-up of some pinkish white flowers turned out so good that I just HAD to include it here:
These pink flowers looked really nice mixed up with the white daisies:
The next picture is from the second stop that we made, at another bus stop further up the road. Here's a great close-up of a small pink thistle:
At that same stop, across the road, I saw some wild fennel blooming. This picture was actually taken between two strands of barbed wire, which I cropped out of the picture:
Quite a way further on, I missed a turn that I had intended to make, and so I pulled over to check my map. There was a sign pointing down a road to the right that referred to irises, so we thought, "Let's go over there and check them out." And thus we made another of our many serendipitous discoveries: a nature preserve with even more fantastic flowers!
We saw several kinds of flowers there that we have never seen anywhere before. Here's one of them, apparently a pink kalanit (anemone):
Here's another example of that same kind of pink kalanit, except this one is a slightly lighter color. Both pictures came out so well that I just had to post both of them:
We had actually seen flowers like this last year on the Golan. This time, we learned that this is called "Jacob's Yellow Rod":
I think these are probably the irises that the sign was referring to. In any case, we had never seen any like them before. This one has a caterpillar crawling on it, something which I only discovered AFTER I had come home and was editing the pictures!
Here's another beautiful example of these lovely, delicate pale-yellow irises. These wild irises, by the way, are actually quite a bit smaller than the typical cultivated varieties.
This picture of pinkish white flowers came out so well that it, too, just HAD to be posted here:
Look at the bugs on THIS iris! There are at least 2 different kinds of them:
Look at this red-striped bug, perched on this iris like some kind of space alien!
We saw quite a few of these delicate blue flowers, as well. Perhaps they are also irises?
The gray background of the path (it was paved at this point) makes a nice contrast for this brilliant yellow flower. But we saw MILLIONS of these beautiful flowers, literally blanketing whole fields!
Here are some other nice yellow flowers, of which we also saw millions!
After we left that nature reserve, we continued north on the main road of the Golan. On the right, I spotted a tour bus parked on a small hill there. I figured it might be interesting to check it out. According to the sign where the road to it turned off, it's called "Tel A-Siqi". It's not a very big hill, and its top was completely covered with a dug-in military outpost, although it's not currently in use, of course. Instead, it is obviously a tourist spot now.
After going up the stairs from the parking are to the top, I found that the people from the bus were up there listening to their tour guide. This was a group of Israelis, who probably were either born here or came here when they were small children because they were all speaking only Hebrew. I think they were also all in their 60's or 70's, obviously retirees. As I watched them make their way carefully down the slightly treacherous steps, I couldn't help but think that some of them probably fought and maybe even watched their comrades die in the 1967 or 1973 wars, when some of the bloodiest fighting occurred in the Golan. They didn't seem at all solemn, though.
I took the following picture from the parking area, looking north towards Har Peres (Mt. Peres), a peak which we can see directly east from our house. This tank seemed to be in reasonably good condition, unlike the other rusty, banged-up vehicles we also saw nearby. Perhaps this was a Syrian tank?
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