A trip to Kokav HaYarden ("Belvoir")

Yesterday, I didn't have any classes until 3:00 p.m., so we decided to visit a national park that we had not been to before. The main feature there is a large Crusader fortress, known both as כוכב הירדן Kokav HaYarden ("The Star of the Jordan") and as Belvoir (from the French for "beautiful view"). It's quite an impressive fortress, but at this time of year, everything is trumped by the millions and millions of wild flowers of dozens of species, that are found everywhere around the Galil (northern Israel).

To get to Belvoir, we drove down and around the Kinneret (the so-called "Sea of Galilee") and then further down the Jordan River Valley. As I usually do, I drove on the east side of the Kinneret, even though it's probably a little further, because it's less populated and I avoid having to drive right through downtown T'verya (Tiberias).

Not far before we got to the road that goes up from the valley to Belvoir, I stopped by the side of the road for 2 reasons. First, I needed to to make a pit stop! But there were also many beautiful flowers in that area, and I wanted to get some pictures of them, too. Here are some of the best ones I got, all within a few yards of where I parked the car on the shoulder of the highway:

These yellow flowers make a nice picture, together with the small pinkish white ones:

Here's a really intense red flower:

I saw quite a few of these interesting flowers, which I had seen before and which we saw more of up at Belvoir. They seem to change color, probably with time, and you can see various shades of blue, purple, and pink. Also, as you can see here, they're somewhat ill-defined, blending in with the greenery:

Here's a tiny pinkish flower:

Look at this beautiful thistle! We have some of these in our yard, too. Yes, I know, they're weeds, and rather nasty ones, at that. But they sure do have pretty flowers!

I think that I saw more white flowers on this trip than I had before, including a number of different species. Here's one kind, with a couple of bugs in the picture, too:

Here are some more. These are really small:

Here's another beautiful thistle, seen from a different angle:
So, that's all the pictures from that pit stop. After that, we continued on our way. There's a narrow paved road that goes up from the Jordan River Valley highway (route 90) up to Belvoir. It's several kilometers long and rises from below 200 meters BELOW sea level up to 312 meters ABOVE sea level. There's barely room for 2 vehicles to pass, but we only encountered a couple on our way up and none on our way down.

When we got there, we found that there is a trail that goes around the fortress itself, passing a little way below it on the hillside overlooking the Jordan River Valley and the mountains of Jordan on the other side. We decided to hike that trail first, before checking out the castle. Here are the pictures that I took on that walk.

First, a lovely tiny blue flower, which I think is a neon. There are actually quite a few of these, but it's very easy to miss them even though their blue color is quite intense, since they are VERY small:

Here's an orange-red flower of a type that I'm not sure that we've seen before:

I've been seeing a LOT of these beautiful pink flowers all over the place this year. In previous years, I saw a few, but now I see large groups of dozens or even hundreds of these in many places all over the Galil:

Here are 5 pictures of more of those blue-purple-pink flowers that I showed you above. These were all in one small area along the trail, just below the castle:




That's all the pictures from our hike on the trail.

Next, we went up into the fortress itself, which was surrounded by a moat! I don't know if there was ever water in it, and, in fact, I rather doubt it, both because it seems to open to the valley and because it would surely have been difficult to find enough water to fill it in this dry country. In any case, it's quite impressive.

At the northeast corner of the castle, there is a view (across the moat to the north) of a vulture feeding area with an explanatory sign. There has been a precipitous decline in the number of vultures in the country as it has developed. This feeding area is helping to save the vultures and is also used for research about them. According to the sign, there are a couple of injured vultures who are kept there all the time, which also helps to attract other birds. Here's a pictures of them (taken at my camera's maximum optical zoom):

OK, so the real focus of the national park is supposed to be the Crusader fortress. I did take quite a few pictures of its various arches and so forth, but I thought I'd just show you just one picture, of the bridge across the moat. Of course, this is a modern bridge, but perhaps we could imagine a fairly-land draw bridge. No, you don't think so? Whatever!