The Kineret and the Yarden

 Ahuva has a work thing on Friday so we decided to do a Thursday hike. It's a very light week of work for Gershon and me so we were easily able to take off and Shira and Ahuva were able to get the day off too. In mapping out the hike, we couldn't find a good place to end. We're pretty comfortable walking about twenty kilometers each time but there was nothing that looked convenient. We figured that we'd play it by ear a little. We put in something called Chaim B'Teva to WAZE hoping we'd be able to park there. That would be about 16 kilometers but was the best we could do without going to far from the shvil. We met at about 6 but were afraid to drive it in the dark. The "road" was very rocky and we weren't sure our cars would be ok. So we decided to park at a school near the path. It was about 2 kilometers off the shvil. So our hike would be 18 even though we'd only be doing 16 on the shvil. 

We drove back to Yaar Shveitz together to start our hike. The forest is very pretty with beautiful views of the Kineret. We started walking a few minutes before 7. Overall, the walk was very easy and mostly on wide paths. We've noticed though that there are fewer markers when you're walking on those kinds of paths. We got lost a couple times. Actually, lost is the wrong word. With all the maps we have on the phones, it's hard to get lost (though I'm sure it's not impossible) but we went off the path. In total we probably walked about two kilometers off the path until we got back going the right way. It wasn't awful but was the worst we've done with it. 

We continued our trek south which is the direction we've been walking almost all the time. We got to the bottom of the Kineret and then walked along the Yarden for a little while. The picture is at Rob Roy which is a canoeing place we'd been to a couple times right at the top of the Yarden. Then we turned right to start heading west. The next few hikes will be mostly west until we get near the coast. 

Gershon said that this was his favorite hike so far. It was very pretty and the weather was perfect though it was quite muddy in some places. As mentioned, it was easy most of the time until the last couple kilometers on the shvil. We climbed a mountain and then walked through some relatively rough terrain. We saw some ducks along the way and lots of cows though we didn't get too close to any of them. Last time, I pet a cow but this time I didn't have that opportunity. In the end, we walked a little more than 20 km and it took us less than six hours. 



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