A trip to Gilboa Stream and D'vorah Falls

I finished feeding the snakes quite early today, so we decided to take a drive to the Golan. We headed up the main road into the central-to-northern Golan, and very soon I began to notice quite a variety of different colored flowers along the highway, especially on the left side. So I pulled over to take some photos.

Here are 3 that I took in that area. First a lovely cluster of pink flowers. As I think I've mentioned before, we did see these in previous years, but there seem to be many more of them this year. They're everywhere, and they're beautiful!

Next, a view to give you a little idea of the diversity and the abundance in that area:

Here's another one. This is a very tall plant, and we saw LOTS of these all over the place:
After driving a little further up the road, I happened to see a sign pointing to a side road on the left that said נחל גלנוע Gilboa Stream (it was in Hebrew and English). I thought that that sounded interesting, but I had already passed the road. So I decided to make a U-turn and go back and check it out. It was a gravel road, a little bumpy in places, but very wide. Not too far down the road, we turned right, and a short distance after that we saw a lot of cars parked. This was the trailhead for the hike down to the stream and a waterfall called מפל דבורה Mapal D'vorah ("D'vorah Falls"), named after the Jewish town of D'vorah, from Talmudic times, that was located on the far side of the canyon.

David and I walked together on the part of the trail that was on the level plateau. When we came to the point where the trail began to descend (by rock steps) into the nakhal, David stayed behind and sat on a rock while I continued down to the stream. On both sides of the trail, all the way down, were all kinds of lovely flowers, most familiar but some entirely new to me! Here is a sample of some of the best pictures that I took along this trail.

First, a lovely cyclamen. I saw lots of these and photographed several, too. White or nearly white flowers are often too washed out in my photos, but this one came out pretty good, I think:

Here's a sample of a new kind of flower that I don't think I had seen before. I didn't see a great many of them today, either:
Here's another new kind of flower, but I saw LOTS of these. Notice the partly white leaves that thereby seem to be part of the flower itself. Also, don't miss the bee at the bottom of the picture, busily doing her work!

The next pictures shows a cluster of white flowers on a flowering tree. I think I only saw 2 or 3 of these trees.

Here's a great close-up of a bee working on a pinkish white flower. I'm so happy with how well this one came out!

Here's an interesting bug that I happened to notice, just sitting quietly on a plant stalk. Most of the bugs and spiders here are, like this one, quite different from the ones I was used to seeing in California. I find them fascinating!

Here's another cyclamen whose picture came out so well that I just had to post it here:

I saw quite a few tiny yellow flowers like this one, but they are also very difficult to photograph, both because of their small size and because of their bright color, which usually causes them to appear too washed out. The shape and size of these are the same as the beautiful pale orange flowers that seem to be more common this year than in past years. This is the first time, though, that I've seen them in yellow, I think.

I just got lucky when I caught this bee in flight! Even better, she's in focus! The name of the town, דבורה D'vorah, means "bee" in Hebrew, so perhaps it was named after this one. :-)

Here's the D'vorah Waterfall itself. It's quite beautiful, isn't it?

Here's a stunning example of those same blue-purple-pink flowers that I've shown you before. But I think this picture is perhaps the best yet that I've managed to get of them:

Having seen the number of cars in the parking lot, we were not surprised to see a lot of people hiking up and down the trail. As I was scrambling down the rocks to get near the pool at the bottom of the falls (and taking pictures of flowers as I went), some soldiers in uniform with their rifles scrambled past me much more quickly than I could go. As you can see in the next picture, they got very comfortable and, I think, even took a little dip in the pool. I'm sure that the water was VERY cold, though!

A little later, when I joined them on the rocks near the pool, they noticed that I was taking pictures, so they asked me if I would take a picture of them on a phone belonging to one of them. Of course, I was more than happy to do so, and I also got them to pose for a picture for me, too. A lovely bunch, aren't they? Now, if we could just get them to quit smoking! :-)

I saw a few of these purple flame flowers but not that many. I had first seen these not far from our house during the past week, when we took a nice spring walk around the neighborhood. Here's a great example from today:

And, finally, one of those gorgeous red poppies. There were quite a few of these, and they, too, are hard to capture. The red is so intense that you often can hardly see any of the details of the flower. This one came out pretty good, I think: