Blaine and I rented a car, got our national parks card, national parks card book, and headed on a road trip to the national parks north of Tel Aviv. The first one we stopped at was Nahal Alexander.
It is where the Alexander stream (river) flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
This is the inlet where the river flows into the sea.
The day we were there it was windy making it a perfect day for windsurfing.
We then drove to Caesarea. We have been here with the students so we didn't stay long. This is the hippodrome where they would have chariot races. King Herod built this city and named it after Emperor Caesar Augustus in 22 BC.
We then went to Nahal Me'Arot a nature reserve with caves of prehistoric man on the Carmel Range
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Caves were marked showing parts prehistoric man would have used.
One of the caves had a light and sound show depicting prehistoric life. It was during this time that man began to live in a permanent settlement with an economy based on hunting and gathering.
That night we stayed in Haifa at the 1926 Hotel. It didn't look like much from the outside but the inside was darling. It was vintage 1926 decor.
It was an apartment/ hotel room.
That evening we walked to the German Colony that was built in 1868 by the German Templar. It has delightful old houses and gardens and Christmas lights.
We ate at a middle eastern restaurant.
The next morning we went to the Baha'i Gardens and Shrine of the Bab.The Baha'u'llah taught that he and the Bab were the latest manifestation of god after Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed.
The landscaping was beautiful. The gardeners used a plumb line to trim the bushes perfectly even.
A gardener was picking oranges for the staff and people in need. Fruit trees are on the grounds.
They used a variety of landscapes in their design.
The temple and gardens are on Mount Carmel and have a beautiful view of the Haifa port.
We drove to two Druze villages, Daliyat el-Karmel and Isfiya. We parked on a side street and thought the hanging plants were beautiful. There's been rain lately so everything is green.
This is the woman I bought a hand woven Druze rug from.
Achviz is a national park that has rock islands off the coast. During ancient times it was a well established city and a station on the great coastal highway.
The reefs are full of pits and covered by shallow water which rises and falls with the tide and creates large breaking waves.
Outiside Achziv National Park is Rosh Hanikra, a rock-cliff formation. At the bottom of the cliff are grottoes and tunnels formed by the crashing waves against the cliff. A cablecar descends to the grottoes where visitors enjoy the scenery and spray from the caverns.
The power of the crashing waves inside the grotto was amazing.
During the British Mandate a tunnel was hewn through the bottom of the rock cliff for a rail line between Lebanon and Israel. In 1948 the Jewish Hagana blew up the western end of the bridge
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Cable car and tunnel at the bottom of the cliff.
At the far northern point of the summit is the Israeli-Lebanese border crossing with a police station and customs house. We actually asked if we could take a picture here and they said yes.
The buoy marks the border between Lebanon and Israel.
The Israeli flag shows we're on the Israeli side of the border.
Border surveillance and security equipment.
Military personel and vehicles
The signs reminded us we were near the border of Lebanon.
That evening we stayed at the branch house in Tiberias. This is the view from the chapel.
Tuesday we went to Gamla, a nature reserve that is part of the Yehudiya forest. Romans captured the city of Gamla in the Jewish revolt in 67 CE. Arden and Lorraine Hopkins came with us.
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Gamla was built on the side of the hill.
It is very steep terrain.
This was the residential quarter from the first century.
A mural showed what the city may have looked like.
Remnants from a structure from an Early Bronze Age.
One of the most ancient synagogues from the second temple period.
Mural drawing of a miqveh
A miqveh was a public purifying bath to fulfill the duty of purification.
A 2-story home
A mural depicting what life may have been like in their homes.
In preparation for the rebellion, an additional wall was built next to the wall of the house. The two walls served as the city wall.
A model of a catapult that Romans used to invade Gamla
Some of the balls used with the catapults.
After Gamla, we drove north to the Syrian border. On the way we saw a mosque riddled with bullet holes and mostly destroyed.
Surveillance equipment near the Syrian border
Looking south into Israel near the Syrian border
Tanks along the road were used for military target practice
There were alot of rocks in northern Israel. You could see where they piled the rocks in lines to clear the land for cultivating and to mark boundaries.
A resident of the area told us this area was part of the War of 67 and the Yon Kipur War in 1973.
The Jewish flag reminded us what side of the border we were on.
Blaine with Syria in the background. We could see a fence marking the Israel border as well as another fence marking the Syrian border. There was an area between the two fences.
Blaine in front of a barbed wire fence.
Border security station
Sign showing where we had been. While we were driving up to the border, we didn't see any military personnel
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That evening we had dinner with the Hopkins in their apartment at the branch house.
The Hopkins told us a story that I thought was worth repeating. On the Friday night after we left Tiberias, they noticed a man walking back and forth in front of the branch building. Thinking he may be lost or casing out the building, they went out and asked if they could help him. He was Japanese and in his broken English asked if this was a church. They said yes and he asked Mormon? They answered yes and he told them he had come from a kibbutz near Afula and was wanting to go to church the next day. They asked him where he was planning on staying since it was raining and he replied that he had planned on sleeping on the front porch. He hadn't realized anyone lived at the church. Hopkins invited him in, fed him, and gave him a place to sleep. He was very hungry. Within 3 hours they had his membership records from Salt Lake. He is a returned missionary, a convert of about 10 years.
Our last day we stopped at Harduf Kibbutz to do some shopping. They have facilities for handicapped adults where they can learn a trade of baking, basket weaving, pottery, weaving etc. I bought 2 bowls that the residents had made.
The Montfort castle in the Nahal Keziv Reserve are among the more beautiful spots in the western Galilee.
Montfort National Park has a Crusader castle by the same name. It was one of the important Crusader citadels (mountain stronghold) in the north of the country. It guarded the northwest entrance to the Holy Land. The citadel and farm around it was built in the first half of the 12th century. This was the entrance into the castle area.
The forest grew within the grounds of the fortress and is still impressive. The citadel is built on a long and narrow spur protected on almost all sides by steep slopes and separated from the east side by a moat. These are remains of a central watch tower.
A Jewish settler played folk music on a recorder.
Remains at the fort
The first part of the hike was on a road but later it was a steep incline with a railing.
We wondered how they moved these huge blocks into place for the foundation of the castle.
After leaving Montfort, we drove the backroads to highway #4, the coastal highway. Along the side of the road was a herd of goats eating all they could find on a rocky hillside.
This was the front of a meat market. This is enough to make you want to be a vegetarian.
After we got lost in Haifa, we saw this sunset over the Mediterranean Sea. What a wonderful world.
It's now New Year's Eve and we decided to make our last stop on our road trip in Tel Aviv. We drove along the shore line and saw the ancient city of Jaffa along the sea. We parked the car and walked on the board walk connecting the Old City Jaffa, one of the world's oldest ports where Jonah set sail on his ill-fated voyage, with the new and modern city of Tel Aviv.
Blaine bought me dinner at a café in Jaffa. The kids-meal hamburger hit the spot. The waitress said the building was very old. Notice the arches in the ceiling.
Blaine in front of the Franciscan St. Peter's Church.
We saw a power-point sermon on the screen to the left of the alter.
"Tel Aviv is the essence of modern Israel. If Jerusalem represents the past then Tel Aviv is the present. It is about the pursuit of material gain and pleasure. It is a city of high-rise office towers, shopping centers, golden beaches, ...and most of all-boundless, bustling infectious energy."
We're back home to our #206 apartment in the Jerusalem Center. No matter how beautiful the country, there is still no view like the view we have from our apartment. I'm going to miss this view.
P.S. Golgotha has a skull on the mountainside. It is the parking lot of the East Jerusalem Bus Station.
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