A trip to the northern Golan

The weather turned a bit cold during the latter part of this past week, and we even got some more much-needed rain. Today, though, the rain is gone, and it has been mostly sunny. It's still been a little chilly, however.

So, we decided to take a drive to the northern Golan. After driving down the hill to Rosh Pinna and north on highway 90 through Kiryat Shmona, we turned right (east) and headed towards the northern Golan. Once the road crosses the northern end of the Hula Valley, it heads up the hill. I noticed lots of flowers along the sides of the road, of course, and finally I just had to stop to take some pictures. So, we'll start with those.

First, a pretty white daisy with a fly on it:

I had seen that the fields looked blue, but it wasn't until I stopped that I was able to see exactly which flowers were causing this. Here's a close-up view of just two of them:

There were only a couple of these purple thistles blooming right there, and I probably would have missed them both if David hadn't drawn my attention to them:

Turning my camera in the opposite direction, I took this picture looking toward Har Khermon (Mt. Hermon, the highest peak in Israel). The peak is really behind the clouds, though, so you can't see in this view that there is still snow up there. We later got to a point where we could see it clearly, but the pictures I took there were too cluttered by junk in the foreground, whereas this one is quite pretty:

When we got to Mas'ade, a Druze city in the Golan, we turned right and headed south. I decided to visit a little valley we had discovered last year. The valley is hidden away just south of Har Bental, but I knew from our visit there last year that there would be many beautiful flowers. And we were definitely NOT disappointed!

Here's a sample of the view, taken ride by the side of the road where I first parked the car:

Here's a very close-up, zoomed-in view of some of those lovely white flowers:

I saw quite a few of these gorgeous tall dark blue flowers. I think that they might be lupines:

There were actually even more of these paler blue flowers, which might also be some kind of lupine, but they didn't stand out as much because of their more subtle color. They were also smaller and closer to the ground, so it was a bit hard to get a good picture of them. Still, I think this one turned out quite nicely:

This picture of one of the yellow flowers turned out so well that I just had to share it with you. I had been worried that it would be blurred, because there was a breeze that kept moving it around as I tried to capture it. In fact, I took 3 or 4 photos, hoping that at least one would be OK. As it so happened, they were ALL quite good!

Here's a picture of a very tiny flower that I don't think I've seen before. There were several there in the valley, but they weren't all that abundant. It was so tiny that I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get a good photo, but, as you can see, I succeeded:

We've seen many more of these beautiful tiny orange flowers this year all over the place than we had in previous years. However, the ones I saw in the hidden valley seemed just slightly more pale than others that I've seen. They are also so tiny that it can be challenging to capture them, but I was quite successful today. Here's the best picture of them that I got:

After visiting the hidden valley, we started on the road westward across the Golan and down, heading for the Jordan River. Before really descending into the narrow, deeper part of the valley where it runs, I stopped at a memorial site that we had passed by many times before but at which we had never before stopped. It's called Gadot Lookout.

There's a large, impressive memorial to those who fought to eliminate the Syrian bombardment of northern Israel, which went on for nearly 2 decades. I listened to the audio that was available there (in English -- the other choice was Hebrew), and learned more about that time.

A good portion of the account was given in the 1st person by a member of Kibbutz Gadot, which lies only a short distance west of the Jordan River and is highly visible from this lookout (and gives the lookout its current name, of course). Before 1967, a Syrian bunker was in this area.

From the time Kibbutz Gadot was established, in 1949, until 1967, it, like several others in that same area, was shelled nearly constantly by the Syrians, who controlled the Golan at that time, right down to the banks of the Jordan River. A whole generation of children on these kibbutzim grew up in bomb shelters due to this. Farmers were forced to plow the fields in armored tractors because of the danger.

The woman, the kibbutz member whom I mentioned above, described how, in 1967, the Syrians completely destroyed the kibbutz. When the residents emerged from the bomb shelters, there were no buildings, no dairy, no chicken run, not even any water left! She said that people from around the country came to help them re-build, an effort which took 2 months. Then the Syrians completely destroyed it again! It was only after this that the Israeli military took the Golan, to finally put a stop to the constant bombardment. You might want to keep this history in mind when you hear Syria whining about the Golan!

Kibbutz Gadot and other kibbtzim of the Hula Valley are not the only things that can be seen from Gadot Lookout. Here's a great view from there of the hill where Tsfat is located:

Here's a detail of a zoomed view taken from that same spot. On the right, you can see the antenna tower which is located directly west of our house and not far from us. I inserted the arrow to show you exactly where our house is!
You might also want to keep THIS picture in mind when you hear about the idea of giving the Golan back to Syria!