Ein Gedi and Yam Hamelech

Yesterday we woke up at the crack of dawn for our tiyul to Ein Gedi. The adventurous people included our family, Avi's family and my mom. We all got geared up in our hiking clothes including crocks and hats/bandanas. We left the house by 7:40 am and reached our destination about 1.5 hours later. The drive takes you through some lovely areas including right by Yericho. For some reason though, I was not scared at all this time. In the past I made David drive the roundabout route through Be'er Sheva (takes about 3 hours). The drive is pretty direct, with few turns. When we arrived at Ein Gedi the parking lot was pretty empty and we had our choice of parking spots. We smeared ourselves with suntan lotion and headed for Nachal Arugot. The kids did exceptionally well, but most impressive was my mom. Not a kvetch out of her ... she was a really trooper. We made several stops in the different waterfall areas. At one stop I was taking our camera out of the backpack and it slipped out of the camera case into the water. I fished it out really quickly but it is still not working. I hope that once it dries out completely we'll be able to use it again. This is the reason though that I am not posting any pictures right now.
After our hike we had a picnic lunch and the men were able to eat in the sukkah on the premises. Avi then bought ice cream/popsicles for all the kids.

We then drove over to the beach to check out Yam Hamelech. I must mention that while hiking in Ein Gedi everyone was paired up with a partner. My partner was Leora. Every time we came to a water source Leora would ask me "is this Yam Hamelech?" (of course today she couldn't remember what it was called so she kept asking me "what was the river called?" and Zvi would correct her and tell her it was a sea). Anyway, back on track, the kids were really looking forward to their visit to Yam Hamelech. Rivka ventured in for five seconds and came screaming out that her badly scratched legs were killing. She was quite upset but felt better when she washed off. Leora and my mom got their feet wet and Zvi and Tikki managed to get more of their body wet. In total, we spent about 5 minutes in the water. It was really hot there too.

We came home, showered and ordered food in. It was a great day.