Early morning hike to Har Shlomo

Yesterday morning (30 April 2012), I decided to drive up into the Eilat Mountains and do a little hiking instead of walking over to the outdoor gym as I have been doing most mornings. After a drive of about 10 minutes, I parked the car near a camping area and followed the trail to Har Shlomo. The trail goes up to the top of the nearby ridge and then down slightly and over to the next ridge. Although it's not labeled (and the trail DOES go on further), I assume that this was the peak of Har Shlomo ("Mt. Shlomo"). This was at about 6:30 in the morning, so the sun was not yet very far up into the sky. But there were some clouds, so, when the sun got behind one of them, I was able to snap the following picture. The Arava (and part of Aqaba, Jordan, too) is mostly hidden in the early morning haze, but it's still a glorious view with the Mountains of Edom (in the modern-day Kingdom of Jordan) on the other side.

Here's the view looking the other way (west). If you look carefully about half-way up the picture and nearly to the right side, you can see a portion of the fence that Israel is building on the Egyptian border. Beyond the fence, you can even see a building or two in Egypt. A little to the left of the middle and at the bottom of the picture, there is highway 12 just before it goes over the pass and starts going close to the border. There is a checkpoint on the highway just after that, where all vehicles must stop in both directions so that the soldiers can check them out. If they are entering the stretch of highway near the border (going northbound in this case), the soldiers also warn everyone strictly NOT to go anywhere west of the highway (that is, between the highway and the border). This portion of the highway was closed to civilian traffic for several months, and it's still only open from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.

Back at the parking lot, here's a view of a hardy tree growing in the campground (with our car parked in the background on the left):