Jordan River canyon

Today we took a drive on a gravel road that we'd never been on before. I knew from my map that it existed, but previous times the weather had recently been rainy, so I figured it would be too muddy to go on. But now the weather has been dry for some time, so it was a good time.

The road begins at the switchback on highway 91 just before it crosses the Jordan River and heads up to the Golan. So, instead of crossing the river, we followed it south on the west side. This is the area where the Jordan River flows from the broad, flat, fertile Hula Valley through a rather narrow canyon and on down to the Kinneret (the "Sea of Galilee"). This gravel road is quite high above the river all the way, but at at least one point there is a cross road (also gravel) that goes right down to the river, to a bridge across the river, known as גשר כפר הנשיא Gesher Kfar HaNasi. The name comes from Kfar HaNasi ("President Town"), which is where the same road goes in the other direction (I only know this from my map, and from Google Earth!). We can see Kfar HaNasi from our house. Here's a picture of the bridge:

However, in the above picture, you can't quite see the west end of the bridge. In the next picture, you can see why it's not possible to drive across this bridge:
The west approach has been washed out by the river. Nevertheless, it was easy for me to WALK onto the bridge. Here's the view from about the middle of the bridge, looking downstream (south):
And here's the view from the same spot, looking upstream (north):
Though it may now be so clear from these pictures, there's really quite a lot of water flowing in the river, especially for nearly the end of May.

This point on the Jordan is about the closest point to our house, but of course we can't see it because it's down in the narrow canyon.