This butterfly (or maybe it's a moth?) caught my eye, and it was nice enough to stay in one place and even with its wings spread long enough for me to get several pictures. Here's the best one. If you look closely, you'll discover, as I did only after I got home and looked at the pictures on my computer, that there is apparently ANOTHER butterfly below this one, with its wings mostly folded together!
There were also a number of beautiful lacy white flowers like this one in the area. Even though the picture's a bit washed out, I think it's still quite nice:
After I took these pictures, I wandered back on the road a bit to the place where it was right by the border. I took a few interesting pictures showing the border, including one of a small rather make-shift sign that said: זהירות. עיקול מסוכן z'hirut. 'ikul m'sukhan. "Caution. Dangerous Curve". I thought this was rather humorous for several reasons. First, this is a very minor road with almost no traffic but bumpy enough that no one is likely to be traveling very fast. Second, it really was only a very gradual turn, hardly what I would call a "dangerous curve". Third, the sign was right by the border fence, and the only danger most people might be concerned about would be the country right on the other side, I think!
I had gotten just out of sight from the car, where David was sitting and reading, but I could hear that vehicles were approaching it. Sure enough, as I came back into sight, I saw that 2 military Hummers (the real, armored ones, not the expensive sport-ute imitations!) had pulled up right next to our car. A couple of the soldiers had already talked to David, and now they were walking towards me. I wasn't worried or scared, but I did realize that I had better be completely honest with them. One of them asked me, in Hebrew, if I spoke Hebrew, to which I replied, also in Hebrew, "a little". He immediately switched to English! Of course, he asked me where I was from and what I was doing. I told him, put my camera in viewer mode, and let him look at the pictures that I had taken. They decided that we were OK, after making us wait a minute or so while they probably checked out our car registration or whatever. Interestingly, they didn't ask to check our IDs or to check us or our car out at all. One of them did look in the trunk (well, actually the hatch) when I put my camera back in there. Then they told us that we needed to move on and that we weren't supposed to take pictures in this area. They didn't seem upset, though, and they didn't make me erase the pictures I had already taken. In any case, that's why I'm only showing you the flower pictures and none of the pictures of the border!
The border turned away from the road not far after that (which I knew from the map). Then we came to an intersection where I turned right, toward Shtula. Not too far along that road, I stopped at another wide place to take a few pictures. We saw many groups of these lovely flowers throughout that area. Here's a close-up of just one of them:
Here's another close-up of 3 of those delicate orange flowers that, as I've mentioned before, we've been seeing more of this year. I didn't see so many today, however, but this picture really came out so nice that I just had to post it here:
After driving a little further along the road and passing some orchards and farm workers, we were starting to get near the border again (I could see the row of light posts) when some purple flowers on the left side of the road caught my eye. I again pulled over (the road was plenty wide there) to check them out. They were gorgeous, and there were lots of them! The first group that I came to was shaded by trees. Here's a close-up view of these tiny flowers (could they be orchids?):
Just a very short distance away, there was another large group of them in the sunlight. Here's a close-up of a couple of them:
I noticed that a bumblebee was buzzing around from flower to flower. She didn't stay long at any one of them, and she tended to be almost invisible as she was making her visits. Finally, after several attempts, I managed to get a good picture of her:
We continued following roads close to the border all the way past Park Adamit (which we did NOT stop at this time) and down the steep very curvy road to the valley. After a brief stop at Kibbutz Matzuba to check in with Golan, our snake-loving friend, and a stop in Karmiel to buy a few things, we started up the hill towards home. Since it was quite a clear day, and we were in no particular hurry, I decided to stop at a viewpoint at the side of the highway above Amirim, where there are good views of both the Mediterranean Sea and the Kinneret (the "Sea of Galilee"). Actually, the Mediterranean is barely visible (it's quite a bit further away), and it was late in the day, so the sun was also not at a favorable angle. Nevertheless, you CAN see a bit of the glint of the sun reflecting off the water in this picture if you look very carefully:
From that very same spot, here's the much better view of the Kinneret:
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