A hike just south of Makhtesh Ramon

Today (8 October 2012) we drove up to just south of Makhtesh Ramon (the Ramon Crater), where I parked the car at the side of the road and took a short hike. The weather was beautiful, with warm sun, a cool breeze, and a few fluffy clouds in the sky. Also, it was about an hour to an hour and a half before sunset, which is a great time for photography. Here are some pictures that I took (all of them with my iPhone 4s).

For this first one, I hiked up near a small cliff (seen on the right) and took this view looking approximately northeast.

This second picture was taken near the same spot but looking a little more northward. The Makhtesh really begins just the other side of these hills.

In this final view, we are looking almost directly east towards two mesas. Somewhat closer, at the bottom of the picture, you can see our car (the red on on the left) and several others parked along highway 40 at the beginning of the trail I took.

Paran River flowing over highway 40

Yesterday (1 October) we were driving down highway 40 after having made a trip further north. When we go to נחל פראן Nakhal Paran (the Paran River), there was actually water in it, something we have never before seen. Since there's no bridge over the river (or even pipes under the road), the water just runs across the road. Luckily, it wasn't too deep to get across easily.

After we had crossed, I parked the car and got out to take some pictures. Here are a few of them. In the first picture, you can see kids wading in the muddy water and a northbound vehicle splashing across.

This is the view looking upstream (roughly towards the west). As you can see, more people were enjoying the water up there.

Here's a view of 2 cars going across the stream, one in each direction. The post at the right is a familiar sight all over this part of the country. It's for situations where the water is quite a bit deeper that this. The lowest black tag marks 0.5 meters, the next one 1 meter, and the top one 1.5 meters. I wouldn't even cross if it were near 0.5 meters (about 20 inches), since that might be enough to wash my car right off the road, I think.

A visit to Ein Avedat

Today (23 September 2012) we decided to visit the Ein Avedat National Park. It's located near Sde Boker, the desert home of Ben Gurion (and his burial place), in the Negev Desert. Its important feature is the deep canyon formed by a sudden drop of Nakhal Tzin (the Tzin Stream), an important stream (dry unless it has just rained, of course!) that drains much of the norther Negev and eventually ends of at the southern end of the Dead Sea.

There are 2 entrances to the park, and we went in both of them. We started with the one that enters the canyon by a switchback road from Ben Gurion's tomb, reaching the bottom of the canyon where Nakhal Hawarim flows into Nakhal Tzin. Here's a view looking of the canyon from the top switchback.

The road then follows the stream a short distance to a parking lot. From there, you must walk to go further up the canyon. Here's the view up the canyon from the parking lot.

Here's another view from the parking lot, looking up at an overhang on the south canyon wall.

We walked a short distance up a nice dusty but smooth trail. Here's a nice view from a little further up the canyon.

After our short walk, we drove back up the way we came in, ate lunch at the Avedat Aroma (along the highway just below the Nabatean city of Avedat, which is another national park), and then went in the upper entrance, not far from there. After a very short drive from the highway, we reached the parking lot. This time, David stayed in the car, and it was a good thing, because the trails up there were generally NOT very smooth, and there were quite a few stone steps, as well.

As I made my way to the canyon, I spotted this ibix also heading towards the canyon.

Here's the view looking down the canyon from the lower viewpoint, which is the one nearest the parking lot.

Here's the view up the canyon from the same viewpoint.

Here's a view looking almost straight down at the bottom of the canyon.

As I was enjoying the views from this viewpoint (which is actually on a broad rock ledge 2 or 3 meters below the level of the canyon rim), another visitor told me to look up, and here's the ibix that I saw up on the rim of the canyon. This is just the best of about 5 or 6 pictures that I got of him! Isn't he magnificent! Check out those horns!

After I came back up from that viewpoint, I saw a trail going parallel to the canyon (but a ways from it) in the upstream direction. I followed it to another viewpoint, located right at the beginning of the canyon. Just as I came to it, I saw this beautiful dragonfly sitting on a cable. It just sat there patiently, and so I had time to get a good picture of it.

This next picture is a view of the stream BEFORE it plunges into the canyon. It's a little hard to get the scale, but the walls here can't be more than 2 or 3 meters high. But this picture was taken from a point not more than a few meters from where this stream plunges into the canyon.

Here's the view the OTHER direction! There were a couple of cables and a sign warning about an abyss ahead, but I was no more than a couple of meters from the edge, I think. Very dramatic!

I easily walked across the stream to the other side and got this view, which only gives a hint of the canyon. Near the center, you can see the railing protecting people on the upper viewpoint from falling into the canyon.

Here's the view from that upper viewpoint.

As you can tell, I had a marvelous time and really enjoyed this trip. I must thank David for waiting so patiently for me in the car, especially since he didn't get the pleasure of seeing ANY of this.

A visit to the west side of Massada

Today (21 July 2012), we decided to visit the west side of Massada, the famous and iconic fortress where the Jews held out as long as they could against the might of the Roman Empire.

In order to get there, one must first drive to Arad, and then one takes a road (a good 20 km long) whose sole purpose, it seems, is to take us to this spot.

This first picture shows the view of Massada from shortly after it first comes into view. As you can see, we are still at a higher elevation than the top of the fortress. Here, you can see all of Massada and also another mountain (to the right of it) that is about the same height. In fact, they don't look separate from this angle, but they are actually separated by a wide gap with nearly vertical walls on both sides. In the distance, of course, is the Dead Sea (the lowest point on the surface of our planet that is not under water!).

Here's a view from much closer and lower that shows only the north end of Massada.

This view is slightly to the right of the one above and is zoomed in more. This is the earthen ramp that the Romans had to build in order to assault the fortress. Imagine the effort and logistics required to move this much dirt, in the middle of a very DRY desert, with NO modern equipment, nearly 2000 years ago! If I had been one of them, I would surely have said, "Forget about it! Just let them HAVE the d*** place!"

This last picture may well be used to illustrate the definition of "serendipity" in the future! I didn't even know that this bird was there until I looked at my photos after getting home and loading them into my computer. I still don't know what kind of bird it is, but it looks magnificent!

A nice picture, and some news about new blogs

Let's start with the nice picture. On Tuesday, David and I decided to get out a bit, since I wasn't very busy, so we took a short drive up the Arava to Kibbutz Yotvata. On the way, there were a few clouds in the western sky, and, some of the time, the sun went behind them. This was too good a photo opportunity for me. Here's one of the pictures that I took:

Now for the news -- I've started 2 new blogs during this week. You may ask why I'm doing this. The reason is that I feel that this blog has become a bit unfocused, and I thought it might be interesting to have blogs focused on particular topics. In addition, I'm planning to do a LOT more writing, so this will become more important.

The first blog that I started is entitled "Arlan's Day -- and online journal". If you'd really like to follow my daily life, including a lot of trivial things, of course, this is where you'll be able to do it. I hope to post there nearly every day. Here's the link to view it.

The second blog I just started this afternoon. It's entitled "Israel and its neighbors -- a political review of the week". As you might guess from the title, I will only be writing weekly in it. My plan is to collect links to various articles during the week and then tie them together with my comments on what they contain and why I think they're worth reading. I really hope that a lot of you will read at least some of the articles, because I KNOW that you'll get a better idea of the real issues facing Israel! Here's the link to this blog.

I am NOT abandoning THIS blog, however! This is where I plan to post most of the pictures and the stories about various places I go. In other words, it will become mostly (though not TOTALLY!) a sort of travelog about our adventures here.

Videos of Nakhal Yoash

Yesterday (Shabbat, 7 July 2012) I took another early morning hike up Nakhal Yoash. This time, I took my video camera with me. Here are a couple of the videos I shot that help to give you a feel of the beautiful valley. I hope that these short movies give you a little more sense of the beauty of the place. Enjoy!

My mom's letters to her mom

I've just started a new project that I've been intending to do for a LONG time.

Way back in the 1950's, from 1951 right after she got married until 1958, my mom wrote letters from Loma Linda, California, to her parents in Phoenix, Arizona. This includes the time when both I and my younger brother were born! Her mother carefully kept the letters, many in their original envelopes. Much later, after grandpa and grandma had moved to California, my mom got the letters, perhaps even after her parents had died. In any case, we got them when we sold my mom's house and have kept them safe ever since. But I had never taken the time to actually look at them.

My project now is not only to read them but also to type them into the computer so they will be safe for posterity. I suppose I actually COULD scan them and do OCR (almost all of them were typed -- after all, my mom had been a typing teacher!). But it seems more interesting to type them in myself.

They were already sorted into years, but not necessarily WITHIN each year. So, I have started with 1951, the first year. I began by sorting the letters from that year by date, and now I am typing them in, one by one.

The "voice" in the letters is very much that of my mom as I always knew and loved her. She is always very positive about everything and everyone. But she's no Pollyanna. After all, when these letters were written, she was still recovering from the terrible car accident in which she had broken BOTH her legs (the UPPER parts!). She was walking by this time (something the doctors had early on thought she might NEVER do again), but she still had pain in her legs, and she still used crutches some of the time. These facts come up from time to time, but the tone of the letters is utterly positive. Of course, the fact that she was also a newlywed helped. She also had the most wonderful things to say about my dad, and I know from my own experience growing up with both of them that she was right. The man she describes is exactly like the dad I knew, as well, always helping with the work, and always completely supportive of mom.

Already the things she talks about are interesting, and I even knew some of the people she mentions. But it should get REALLY interesting when I get to the parts for which I was actually present. Naturally, I don't remember too many things from the 50's, but I may find that I'll remember some of them, and I'll get a LOT of fill-in about my own early childhood. It should be interesting!

So, stay tuned, and I'll try to post again from time to time about this project. Perhaps I'll even share a few quotes from my mom. If she were writing now, in the early 21st century, she'd probably be doing a blog, too!