Another trip to the Golan

Today was a beautiful warm sunny day, so we decided to take another trip to one of our favorite area -- The Golan.

We started by driving down and across the Hula Valley, crossing the Jordan River, driving up to the Golan on the other side, continuing through Katzrin, and following the Road of the Falls.

Spring is in full swing here, especially in the Golan. There are gorgeous wild flowers everywhere! We stopped at the first parking lot, and walked a short distance to Ayit Falls. I began taking pictures of the lovely flowers. Here's a slightly cropped version of the second picture I took. It wasn't until I got home, loaded the pictures into my computer, and looked at them that I noticed the lizard you see in the upper right!

Here's a close-up view of another nice flower. There were LOTS of these there all over the place:

Here's a view of the falls itself. It was in the shade but all around it was sun. My camera adjusted for the shade so that everything else around is a little washed out. But it gives us a great view of the falls:

Here's an interesting white-on-green flower:

I have seen lots of these flowers every year. It wasn't until I looked in my iPhone app guide to the flowers of Israel today that I learned that it is called a "Great stork's bill":

This is the view from right next to our car in the parking lot there (you can see a little of it in the lower right) looking directly back towards the mountain we live on!

This is a zoomed view of a reservoir in Syria that has just been built within the last couple of years. You can see that there's a town on the far side and also on this side, including a minaret at the extreme right of the picture:

This is another zoomed view towards Syria. In the foreground, you can see the ruins of the city of Kuneitra. This was a major Syrian base before the Yom Kippur War (1973), and that's how it got destroyed. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Israel returned it to Syria and Syria promised to rebuild it. As you can clearly see, they did NOT keep their promise. Instead, the re-built the city of Kuneitra some distance to the east, as you can also see in the background of this picture. It's important to keep this picture in mind when you hear talk about Israel giving back the Golan to Syria in exchange for a "promise" of peace.

Before leaving the Golan, we drove north to the Druze city of Mas'ade and ate a delicious lunch at מסעדת השלום Misadat HaShalom ("The Peace Restaurant"). Note that, although the Druze speak Arabic, the name of the restaurant was ONLY shown in Hebrew, as are MOST of the signs there.

We drove down the road from the Golan that ends up next to Gonen. From there, we could choose to drive a little distance north and then across the Hula Valley and south on Highway 90, the nice, 4-lane road on the west side of the valley; or we could choose to drive south on the small road on the east side of the valley. At the last minute, I decided to take the latter, and, boy, was I glad I had! On a few kilometers down the road, we came to whole fields of fabulous blue lupens! I pulled over where the shoulder was wide enough and walked back a short distance to take pictures. Here's the general view looking north:

Here's a close-up, zoomed view of a single lupen with sky in the background:

Here are two pictures of two different bees doing their work on two different lupens:

After this, we returned home. We must be sure to make as many more trips to the Golan and other places in northern Israel as we can over the next month or two. The flowers are really great this Spring!