After some negotiating on the times we decided to meet at the end of the trail at 8:15 AM. I was able to do the daf and go to netz minyan and then leave. We were on the road around 6 and got to the Metzudat Yesha around 8:10. We paid 35 shekel and took highway 6 to save about 25 minutes. Seiferas got there a few minutes after us. They were exhausted because they had a super late night Thursday and got very little sleep. We climbed into their car and drove to the Pesel Aryeh Hashoeg. It was a 20 minute drive mostly north and through Kiryat Shmona. We thought about checking out the lion but decided that we didn’t have time and we should get started. We started the trail at 8:50.
We were relying on shvilist.com and it said it was an 18 km hike and should take about four hours. We figured that it might take us longer but we should be able to do it in under five hours. We walked at a nice pace and barely stopped. I think we stopped twice - once for water for about two minutes and once we had melon and vegetables for about ten minutes. We saw lots of cows and bulls and one very big snake. We tried following the markers for the shvil yisrael. Most places were clearly marked. At one point we must’ve missed the marker because all of a sudden we didn’t see one so we doubled back and found the missed turn. That was probably about a half kilometer of extra walking and cost us a few minutes.
For almost the entire time I walked with Gershon while Shira and Ahuva walked together. Most of the time the men were in front but often the women went ahead. We all walked the same pace and were generally just a few strides from each other. We really didn’t stop to look at anything though there were some nice views.
At around 1 PM, we figured that we should be finished and I turned on Google maps. It said that we still had more than FIVE kilometers to go. None of us could believe it. We were really starting to tire but at least now we knew exactly how much further we had. We got to the ending point at 2:20. So it took us five hours and forty minutes which was far longer than we expected but it turned out that we had walked more than 23 kilometers. We have no idea where we veered from the path but somehow we added at least five kilometers to our hike. Next time, we need to prepare a little better and maybe even bring a map with us.
We then drove the Seiferas’ back to their car and drove home. We got home at 5 PM with just enough time to get ready for Shabbos. Thankfully, we were going out for lunch and were only four for dinner. It was a very enjoyable day and we are anxiously waiting for the next stage of the hike.
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