18 August 2012

This morning, David and I drove up to where highway 12 crosses Nakhal Shlomo, parked the car there, and walked up the nakhal. We had to be more careful than when we walk on pavement, but generally it's a pretty smooth walk due to the gravel floor of the nakhal. This is a nice walk because of the relative smoothness, the beauty of the area, and the fact that it's in the shade long after the sun comes up since it runs basically north and south, and Mt. Shomo towers immediately east of it. This is the first time I have put on socks and shoes and taken an off-pavement walk since I turned my ankle and fell, more than 3 weeks ago. It went very well, and we both enjoyed the walk a lot.

After breakfast, we got into the car again, stopped and filled the tank and got Pepsi Maxes, and headed out for a drive. We drove up a little past Mitzpe Ramon and then turned left on highway 171, a road we had never been on before. It goes across the rolling desert, following nakhals some of the time and hill ridges in other places. It ends at a military base just before the Egyptian border. Just before the base, 2 female soldiers with big guns were keeping people from going further. One of them walked over and greeted me but, of course, had to tell me we couldn't go any further. Of course, I hadn't planned to go further anyway, since I know that highway 10, which goes right along most of that border, is ALWAYS closed.

We returned to highway 40, drove a little further north to Avdat, and ate lunch at the Aroma restaurant there. After buying some more Pepsi Max at the adjacent Yellow gas station, we drove north just a little more and turned left on the highway that goes out to the Ramon Air Force Base. We returned to highway 40 on another road that hits it further south. From there, we returned home, stopping only to pee by the side of the road and to replenish our home date supply at Kibbutz Yotvata.

After we came home, David had a nice chat with his sister in Ohio and her granddaughter. I posted in my other 2 blogs (my political commentary and my mom's letters to her parents in the 1950s), and then David and I went for our evening walk.