We started by driving south along the eastern side of the Kinneret (the "Sea of Galilee"). At the southern end of that road, we turned left (east) and took the road that follows the Yarmoch River, which is the border between Israel and Jordan in that area. The road goes along the top of a vertical cliff that drops off to the bottom of the valley where the river runs. This river flows into the Jordan river south of the Kinneret, and from there on the Jordan River is the border.
After following the Yarmoch River valley for a while, we come to the point where the main road up to the Golan turns off on the left (heading basically north). A short distance up that road, I pulled over to the side and took a few pictures.
Here's the first one, in which we are looking about west-southwest down the Yarmoch River valley. In this view, you can see a bit of the vertical cliff I was talking about, the water in the river itself, and a broken bridge that obviously used to cross the river at one time, probably when this was the border between Syria and Jordan, before 1967.
Here's a close-up view of a pretty pale pink flower. I saw plenty of these in that area, although I don't recall seeing exactly this same type of flower before:
In this picture, taken from that same place, we are looking basically north. You can see the road that we are about to travel on winding up the hill ahead. The road is steep, narrow, and has many very sharp hair-pin turns!
Rather abruptly, the road reaches the top of the hill, and one might be surprised to discover that it's nearly flat up there! The farmers (Israeli farmers!) have made good use of this area, planting large fields of grain or hay.
After passing through this large, flat area, the road comes to a place where it basically follows a sort of "isthmus" where the terrain falls away on both sides of the road. Then we come to the next part of the Golan, which is again somewhat flat, but more rolling than the southern area. A short way after that, I saw several cars pulled over on the side of the road, so I also pulled over. The people from the cars had probably gone hiking on a nearby trail that, according to the sign, led to a spring. I didn't check that out, because there was no indication of how far away the spring might be! I did take some pictures, though, of the beautiful flowers right along the road. This picture isn't so nice in itself, but I'm including it to give you some idea of the variety and beauty of the flowers right by the road:
Here's a close-up of several of the lovely white flowers and one beautiful red poppy:
After that, we continue northward on the Golan, entering a more desolate, wild area, where there are no fields and only a few cows or the occasional orchard. We decided to eat our picnic lunch (hard-boiled eggs, dried figs, dates, pecans, and water) at Har Peres (Mt. Peres), the round mountain (it looks like one of those rounds chalot that we eat for Rosh HaShana!) in the Golan that we can see almost due east of our house.
As we were driving on the side road that leads up to Har Peres, I suddenly noticed that there was a stork standing right at the side of the road not far ahead. These are magnificent large birds! Before I could get a picture, though, it flew away. However, there were several of them soaring around that area, and eventually another one (or maybe the same one) landed near the road again. This time, I was able to get a couple of pictures. Here's the best one:
I also tried my luck at capturing them while they were flying. I only succeeded once, and even that time the stork was clear over in the left side of the frame, meaning that I barely got it! Here's the appropriate detail of that picture:
The storks were not the only birds enjoying the updrafts around Har Peres. I have no idea what kind of birds these are. They are more "normal" sized birds than the storks. There were quite a few of them obviously enjoying themselves, and I managed to capture one of them in this photo:
Har Peres is clearly a volcanic peak (as are virtually ALL the peaks in the Golan). It even has a crater in the middle of it! We parked the car in an available area just after the road passes through a small gap and starts to circle around the crater towards the military installation on the far side. Then we ate our aforementioned lunch. After eating, I grabbed my camera and snapped some nice flower pictures right in that area.
Here's a close-up of yet another kind of gorgeous red flower:
I've been seeing a lot of these "purple flame" flowers all over northern Israel this year, whereas in previous years I don't even remember seeing them at all:
After leaving Har Peres, we continued northward on the main road. Suddenly, we came over a little rise, and this is what we saw:
Here's a close-up view of just a couple of the cows wading in the shallow water and grazing:
From many places along this road, we had been able to see the snow on Har Khermon (at the extreme northern end of the Golan), but the views had not been so good for getting a nice picture. It still may be a little hard for you to make out the snow, but after this we turned westwards and began heading home. So, here's our car in the foreground with the snow-capped mountain in the background:
Here's a close-up view of the small yellow sign that you can see in the previous photo. I'm including this as a typical example of an Israeli sign. The top part is a standard international warning symbol indicating the the road will be turning left. On the lower part of the sign is the written part, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The Hebrew says האט (which is pronounced "hate"), and, of course, means "slow". I assume that that is also what it says in Arabic, but I don't even know the alphabet in that language!
While I was stopped, I also took several other pictures. Here's a detailed view of one of the many white flowers that I see everywhere:
I also got very lucky! I noticed a butterfly flying around, and it landed not far from me. I managed to get a couple of pictures before it flew away. Here's the best one:
I'll close with yet another picture of the tiny pale orange flowers that we have been seeing so many of this year. Actually, in this particular location, there were only a few of them:
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