What a great day today! Had another amazing (typical Israeli hotel) breakfast with lots of great selection. BJ was in heaven. After a leisurely breakfast, we headed out for a "recovery" ride in the Hula Valley, starting right outside the resort. We still had some moderate hills to climb, but for the most part the ride was flat. And so was Ann's tire... again! .....Except for a wrong turn that led us up a long hill climb
The weather was perfect, and the scenery was beautiful... majestic mountain ranges in the background and fields of orange groves, apple orchards, corn, cotton, and more on both sides of the road. This is a very fertile valley - once swamp land that had been drained in the 1800's
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After a 60 km ride, we headed out by car to Har Ben Tal ...an important military site high up in the Golan (over 1100 metres above sea level. It overlooks Syria and Lebanon and was strategic in keeping the Syrians from invading Israel in both the '67 and '73 wars. To get to this area we had to climb (by car) over mountain ranges at dizzying heights and tight switchbacks, but with amazing vistas. Even the climb to the top of Har Ben Tal was awesome, and to think I did it on bike two years ago!
We had time to squeeze in a drive to Nimrod's Castle, an abandoned Moslem castle ruin high up in the mountain range not far from our resort. Unfortunately, the site was closed for the day, so we couldn't get in. We stopped nearby for some local apples to munch on and headed back to our resort and now await dinner.
Tomorrow we drive down to the Dead Sea and Masada before going to Jerusalem.
Check out the picture album now added. You can bring it up full screen as well.
