It’s a Small World

We’re sacked out in the ugliest powder blue Mitsubishi you have ever seen. James just flew out and we’re hanging around Tel Aviv waiting for our next set of friends to arrive. With all the traffic it totally didn’t pay to drive all the way back home in between. Plus we needed to try to…

I woke up feeling a bit nervous. I knew we had a long hike planned and for some reason it just worried me. My not so normal brain started saying things like “what if the sweet shop where we plan to eat breakfast doesn’t have nourishing enough food and you get weak and shaky and…

The desert was lovely but it’s grand to be back in the hectic world of Abu Dis. There was a howling wind today and trash was flying everywhere as we rolled into town. We needed supper so we parked on the Main Street and picked our way around fruit vendors, vehicles and people to a…

We slept in. I seriously needed that! We have a small apartment rented in Eilat and it’s blissful. No battling with the shower to keep it hot, no breaker flipping from too many heaters running, and we can flush our toilet paper instead of putting it in a trash can. First stop Pharmacy to get…

The morning started in Elah Valley where David slew Goliath. Well, actually it started stuck in traffic for two hours. That’s fairly entertaining! Always lots to look at cause there’s just so many people. Traffic jams in the West Bank are noisy affairs with much honking, shoving, and driving the wrong way down one ways…

Yesterday I was too tired to write. Also we had gone to places I had written about before like En-Gedi, Dead Sea, Masada and Lots wife. We also found a new hike called the Wadi Murabba’at hike that was deliciously narrow and steep. It ran along a gorge to some caves where they recently found…

We did it! We went back to Mikmash or Mishmash or Mukhmas, whatever you prefer and found Bozez and Seneh. Thanks to our unique encounter there yesterday we tried to hike in from the Israeli side but after driving for miles along the fence we finally gave up. There simply was no way through. Disgusting.…

It feels like a month instead of only 60 hours ago that we were “four good-looking devils” eating an all American meal at the Brookings Perkins. I’m not sure what we did that triggered the jolly lady walking by to refer to us as good looking devils, but apparently that’s how Heath, Seth, Zach n…

And so our trip has dripped it’s way to an end. Literally it dripped all afternoon, not enough to soak us but enough to keep us rather damp. The sun was shining in the morning so we struck out for the Old City and did the rest of the Rampart Walk that we hadn’t done…

While the supporting parents shout from the balcony, our boys are dashing around outside trying to help a couple guys keep their construction sight from blowing away. It’s vicious windy out and unfortunately these guys had left several pallets of styrofoam concrete molds sitting at the national park across from us. Styrofoam pieces are flying…

We saw a bridge in Jerusalem that had some decorative lions on it and someone had kindly stuck masks over their noses. Very thoughtful. Today started early because we didn’t want to fight traffic going into Jerusalem. We had an 8:45 tour at The Western Wall tunnels and hoped to visit the Dome of The…

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…

Say what?! There we sat at a checkpoint between the West Bank and Jericho and these chic girls with Uzi’s were telling us there was no way we could leave the West Bank. “I’m sorry, Israel doesn’t want any more tourists”. We explained patiently that we had only stayed in the countryside and visited Herodium…

We woke up to gorgeous weather and a big hiking agenda. If Palestine doesn’t want us at the main religious sights we will happily take the path less traveled! We also woke up to an email from Expedia saying we needed to call and change our flights asap. We worked on that intermittently but haven’t…

Yesterday evening we passed a man carrying a bloody dead rat and hissing at invisible dangers. In between he’d clutch his ankles, perhaps feeling snakes tangling around them. It was different. Today our focus was Timna Park. That’s a fabulous park full of hiking trails, old copper mines, climbs, bike trails and a full scale…