It’s a Small World

The path was still in the shadows as we climbed up Mt. Arbel in Galilee, so although it was supposed to be a hot day, we still hadn’t broken a sweat. The cows and goats were grazing the steep slopes and a brilliant blue bird was singing from a rock. Another beautiful morning in Israel.…

The Tent The breeze shivers the olive trees and our little fire sends a puff of smoke smack into Garrett’s face. We are sacked out on elderly couches and wobbly plastic chairs smack in the middle of an olive orchard. Beside us is a large insulated tent that “easily” sleeps 10 people. The owner has…

Is there anything more epic than walking up a steep mountain path surrounded by a carpet of wildflowers, and looking out over the Sea of Galilee to the snowy peaks of Mt Hermon rising in the distance? Yes. It’s doing that and managing to dodge all the cow pies on said path. Not naming names…

Some things work out better, some worse. It’s the end of Galilee day and we’re tired, itchy and a touch sun burned. After a LONG night at a dump in Bet She’an, we felt ready to tackle the day. And it was a dump. Heath said he had felt positively like he was hobnobbing with…

The rest of our group managed to fly in without any big ticket issues, so now we’re 6 of us rolling around in a massive 9 passenger van. No creative luggage packing needed. It’s almost sad. It was Shabbat evening when we entered Jerusalem, and not having looked at the GPS route properly we were…

Temple Mount had no queue this morning, so we were able to go right on up! The sun was blinding as it bounced off the stones, but it was peaceful and beautiful. Our legs passed the modesty police check without triggering any alarm, so no extra skirts had to be worn over our existing ones.…

I’m writing this a day late as we wait in a long checkpoint line to get into Jericho. All we want to do is quick buy some fruit, but it is what it is. It’s the first time that we’ve actually been delayed by the Police, so we’re not complaining. The girls arrived in spite…

So apparently the war is affecting us a little. I woke up abruptly in the night to see Heath thrashing and kicking at some imaginary opponent. Seriously, I doubt he could kick that fast if he was awake. I thought for a second he was having a seizure and would fall out of bed, but…

“How long can we stay in this dump?” Heath asked from the kitchen, where he was trying to creatively fry the terrible cheese left over from last night’s fail. Nothing he tried worked, the cheese remained inedible. After an excellent night on our platform and waking up to beautiful sunshine on the Sea, our spirits…

We had to leave by 3:47am to make our goal of watching the sunrise from the top of Masada. The gate opens at 5:30am for the sunrise hikers. There were a grand total of 5 hikers. Three horribly wide awake Jewish boys and us. The hike is up the Snake Path, which is still the…

I would be lying if I said we felt no unease as we swept around the roundabout into Abu Dis last night, past the big red sign warning of danger, and on to the busy, rutted street. We swung into our favorite shawarma shop and the owner and his son were as welcoming as ever.…

“Hey, don’t touch the horse.” The command, given in highly accented English, is coming from an slightly nervous Arabic boy, and he is gaining his courage mostly from his two companions. The thing is, we didn’t even want to touch the horse. He was skinny and noisy and all together sort of yuck. The horse,…