Category: Israel
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War
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.…
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Night Hours
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…
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Daylight Hours
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…
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Galilee
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…
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The Saga Continues
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…
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Herrodian Day
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.…
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Tunnels and Tombs
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…
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Back South
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…
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Where Are We Anyway?
“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…
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My Legs are Falling Off
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…
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Shabbat
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.…
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We Made It!
“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,…
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Living The Van Life
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…
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Manna from Heaven and Slippery Streets
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…
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Back Home in Abu Dis
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…
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On the Eighth Day They Rested.
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…
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Goliath and Jonah
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…
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New Friends
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…
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Fun Discoveries
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.…
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Cut Loose!
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…
It’s a Small World 