I got up early this morning (around 5:00 a.m.). I had decided to hike up Nakhal Yoash again, planning also to try to go up the hill that lies just south of the beautiful valley. There is an unmarked yet clearly used trail up to that peak from the ridge west of the valley (where the marked trail goes), but when I actually got close to it, I decided it was a bit steeper than I wanted to try. In particular, it can be a bit scary and even dangerous to come DOWN a very steep trail if it is also covered with lots of loose gravel or small rocks. So, I decided to go the other way (north) and follow the marked trail in that direction, towards the highway. In the end, I walked all the way up to highway 12, hitting it just this side of the security checkpoint. Then I walked back to my car on the highway (down, down, down!), which took me about 35 minutes.
After breakfast this morning, David wanted to get out of the house, so I suggested that we drive up highway 40 and try one of the unpaved roads that goes up or down one of the nakhals. We had first thought of Nakhal Tzikhor, but the signs indicated that we were not allowed in those areas because the military uses them for practice (perhaps we could still have done it if we had coordinated ahead of time, something that I know can sometimes be done). So, we continued a little further north, to Nakhal Paran. It was also off-limits in the upstream direction, but the downstream direction was okay. So that's the way we went.
These roads are really better suited to 4WD vehicles with higher clearance that our little Panda, but often they are quite passable for us, as well. Most of the road, in fact, was fine for us, but we eventually came to some areas with pretty deep and loose gravel, and we barely made it through. I was really hoping that we'd be able to go all the way through to Paran itself, down in the Arava near highway 90. But we eventually came to an area where the road went into the stream bed fairly abruptly. I figured we could probably make it in, but I was worried that, if we were forced to turn around further down, I'd have trouble making it back UP at that point. So we decided to turn around.
Unfortunately, when we got back to one of those really gravelly areas we had passed coming down, I didn't approach it fast enough, and we got stuck! I couldn't go forwards or backwards, and the front wheels were in so deep that the bottom of the car was down to the gravelly dirt. This is when David had the idea of using the floor mats from the car in front of and behind the drive wheels, to get some traction. I immediately thought it was a GREAT idea and proceeded to implement it. At first, I wasn't sure it was going to help, but before long I managed to get the car unstuck and back to a place on firmer ground (and the floor mats seem no worse for the wear, just a but dusty!). Then, by going quickly and staying to the side where the ground was firmer, I was able to get past that gravelly area. There was yet another gravelly area still ahead, but this time I was ready, and I absolutely SPED through it and managed NOT to get stuck again! We're going to have to be a bit more careful about these jeep roads, I think, but, all's well that ends well, and so it was an interesting adventure. By the way, the canyon is really quite beautiful (when I had a chance to look at it!). It's quite wide, but in some places there are nearly vertical cliffs on both sides.
When we returned to Eilat, we headed straight for the Ice Park & Mall and ate lunch at Greg there. I had a salad I hadn't tried before, which had French-fried yams on top of it and was quite nice. David had yam ravioli (an Israeli favorite -- practically EVERY restaurant and café has some version of it!) with a nice cream sauce. Both of us had large ice-cafés. After that, we returned home and talked to David's sister and her husband and granddaughter in Ohio (via Skype) for a while.
This evening, I posted another of my Mom's letters to her parents, this one dated September 27, 1951. You can read it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment