It’s a Small World

I’m sitting at a wobbly metal table outside Schnitzel Dominos, our favorite eatery in Kfar Kasem. It’s a local joint run by Arabs that are surprised and tickled that we’re back. Traffic is roaring past, a constant stream of customers comes for their schnitzel and everything is foreign. Several plates of neon pickles grace the table and we’re all happy as larks! These guys are awesome. You have never, ever seen anyone move so fast while they prepare food! Subway could take a few lessons.

Today we headed North to the Golan Heights. Obviously we weren’t going to risk driving anywhere in the West Bank. Our Embassy sent us an email this morning telling us we can transit through there but not stop. All Tourists will be denied entry in Israel after Mar 12 so we really will have this place nearly to ourselves. It’s certainly interesting😷!

No words or picture can describe spring in the Golan Heights. Its stunning. There’s flowers everywhere and blooming trees and bright new green on the trees. Sheep wander around and there’s ancient ruins scattered all over with flowers growing right out of the walls. And through it all there is the darker side.

We drove along the Lebanon border to Hermon Springs park where we did some hiking along a roaring mountain stream. There was fabulous water falls, suspended walkways and in one cliff face there was a wild bee honeycomb. It wasn’t extreme like most of our hikes, but to be honest we seem to be a little tired. Apparently you can handle only so many miles in a week if you are middle aged. Plus I had to stare at every little thing since I knew it’d be a long time before I could see such fabulous scenery again.

From there we drove up to Nimrod Fortress, an old fortress from the Crusaders time that is fairly well preserved. We scrambled around there for an hour, then ate our picnic lunch at a roadside table.

We stopped at Mt Carmel on our way home and thought about stoning prophets. The mountain is covered with convenient sized stones for just such a pastime. Switchbacking our way down we could look out over the Haifa port and see dozens of ships in the Mediterranean. We stopped at Nesher Park to take a quick hike that involved two long suspension bridges over a gorge. That sounds quite straightforward, but in all reality we couldn’t figure out how to get to the trailhead, our navigation didn’t seem to like the new intersections, my very own navigation ideas were being butchered and overrun by Candace and Cody and the young kids in the backseat were trying to tell us where to go. I was ticked. But not for long. Just a quick yelling session by all and it was over. And the hike was worth the kerfuffle.

Tomorrow it’s back into Jerusalem… if they let us.