1 October 2012

I got up slightly late this morning but was still out of the house by about 5:35. I just walked over to the gym, worked out a little, and walked back, stopping at the usual place to do my stretches.

For today, we had decided to drive up to the Akrabim Ascent (up out of Nakhal Tzin) and continue to the Small Makhtesh. As we drove up the Arava, we were a little surprised to see water in several places. I thought that I had seem some flashes of lightning last night to the north, but I hadn't heard any thunder. Apparently, quite a bit of the Negev got some significant rain. Although the road was not flooded as we were up the Arava, I saw numerous places where it HAD been (I could tell by the dirt on the road which was obviously dried mud). I began to wonder if we would even be able to cross Nakhal Tzin, which is a MAJOR stream in that area. On the road up to it, which follows a rather minor stream, there were several places where rather large rocks had even been washed onto the road. But when we got to Nakhal Tzin, there was no water at all!

Interestingly, there WERE some places with small amounts of water on the road as we went up the very steep ascent and continued as the road followed a valley at the top. All of them were very passable, of course.

We had never taken the turn towards the Small Makhtesh (crater) before, but we took it this time. Although that road is NOT paved, there was no danger of getting stuck. The main difficulty was that it was quite bumpy so we had to proceed slowly. It was only a short drive, however, to a parking area, from which one had to walk to the Small Makhtesh. Since it was the middle of the day and still quite hot and even a bit humid, I wasn't interest in doing that, especially since I was wearing only my flip-flops (I hadn't planned on any hiking, of course). We drove a little further up that road, and I was able to see that the crater was really not very far away, so it will be a nice little hike some time in the future when the weather is cooler.

I had originally planned to return home the same way we went, but it was still reasonably early, so we decided instead to continue to Y'rokham, Sde Boker, Avedat, and Mitze Ramon, and to return home via highways 40 and 12. We ate lunch at the Aroma at Avedat.

One of the most interesting things about the whole trip was what we saw when we got to Nakhal Paran on highway 40. There is no bridge or even pipes under the road there, but there is obviously a major stream. However, I had never before seen any water in it at all. Today, there was plenty. It was still easy enough to drive through it on the road, but it was quite impressive! I stopped and parked after we had forded the stream and got out and took a bunch of pictures -- of the stream in both directions and of vehicles splashing across it. This, by the way, is the very same stream we had driven down 2 days ago (and gotten stuck in the sand. That road would definitely NOT have been passable at all today, probably not even for 4-wheel-drive vehicles!