Continuing the trek west

 Despite the fact that I got up from shiva for my father on Wednesday, we hiked on Friday. That was the original plan and there was really no reason to delay it. I had been sitting around too much and really wanted to walk. I preferred to daven shacharit though at my regular minyan in Bet Shemesh which meant that we'd get a late start. I initially thought that we could still do 19 kilometers but Ahuva rightly pointed out that would be too much for a Friday so we cut it down to 15.6 kilometers on the trail. 

We met at 8 AM in Kfar Chasidim which would be the end of the hike and then drove together to the Arab town of Kaabiye. We started hiking at about 8:40 and I was hoping that we'd be done no later than 1 PM. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. As per usual we got "lost" a couple times on the hike. The word is in quotation marks because we weren't exactly lost but somehow fell off the trail. Actually at one point, we were on the trail but were somehow going backwards. We're really not sure how that happened and it was just luck that we realized as soon as we did. I always walk with the Israel National Trail app open on my phone but I don't necessarily look at it all the time. I generally check, if we haven't seen a marker in a while or if we're not sure where to turn. That wasn't the case this time since we were on the trail and we thought we knew. I happened to look at it though and realized we were going backwards. It took us a while until we confirmed that's what we were doing and figured out the right way to go. It all worked out but we ended up wasting about 20 minutes. 

There were a couple other times when we got confused that cost us a few minutes. The hike was not  particularly difficult but it wasn't super easy. There were no really steep inclines but there enough hills that made it difficult at times. Ahuva and Shira made the decision to leave their hiking boots in the car since we didn't anticipate a difficult hike. That may have been a mistake as there were times that the terrain was tough. On the other hand, Gershon did wear his boots and the laces got caught and caused him to trip. So not sure that was the right decision either. 

There were a lot of cows along the way including two times that they were in the middle of the path and didn't seem interested in moving. I spoke to them as a friend and they just watched us as we walked past them. We also saw a bunch of roosters and a couple goats. Perhaps, more interestingly, we saw a lot of people. We saw a couple solo walkers doing the shvil by themselves. We also passed a group that is doing the shvil in parts with two hikes a month of about 15 kilometers each time. It should take them about three years to finish. Also, we passed a bunch of other people near Hermit's Mill. It looked like they were picnicking but not sure if that was part of a hike. The woman pictured was one of those people. We asked her to take a picture of us but it took her a long time to figure out Gershon's phone and the pictures didn't come out great. What should have been a 30 second stop turned into 5 minutes instead. 

As we were walking, I realized that we'd soon be passing highway 6 and I was excited. That's a big highway and I was curious how the shvil would do it. We've crossed highways before and there are usually walking tunnels that go underneath but that would be one huge tunnel to go across the entire highway. I was anxiously waiting for it and then suddenly I realized that we were on the other side of highway 6. I'm still not quite sure how we did it but highway 6 must have gone through a big tunnel that we didn't even realize that we were walking above the highway when we did. 

We got to the end of our hike at 1:20 so we really didn't make great timing. We had fun though as usual and it was good to be out on the trails again. 

Pesach tiyul without the kids

We didn't hike in March because of too many scheduling conflicts (travel, Naftali's bar mitzva, Yonah and Yael(i)'s engagement (!!),  Big Adir's marathon, Pesach preparations) so we're hoping to hike twice in April. We decided long ago that we'd try to do one on chol hamoed. We tried to work it out so at least some of our kids could come. In the end though, we opted to do it on the third day of chol hamoed with no kids. We planned for a hike of less than 20 kilometers so we could be home at a reasonable hour and still spend some time with the families. 

After a bit of negotiation on the start time, we decided to meet at the end point around netz (6). The problem was that the end point was in an Arab village called Ka'abiyye-Tabbash-Hajajre. Shira was not crazy about spending a lot of time there davening and stuff so we first met at a gas station and then drove to Ka'abiyye to leave the car. We then drove to Nof Hagalil to start our hike. We got started at 7:13 and walked in the city for a little before finally being put on a dirt trail. The first half of the hike was very easy trails with few hills. So it wasn't bad at all. 

The hardest part about these hikes is staying on the trail. I keep two maps open so I usually know soon after we veer off course. There are also quite a few markers that help direct us. Sometimes, there are markers every 50 meters and it's easy. Other times, there are big gaps and/or the markers are well hidden and we make a wrong turn. Seems to happen on almost every hike but we've gotten much better at finding our way. On this hike there was one point where we were supposed to go straight but it was closed off. It wasn't clearly marked what we should do but we figured it out. It does make our hikes a little longer. 

A cool thing that I mentioned before is the tunnels they make under highways. On this particular hike, we had to cross both highways 77 and 79. Under highway 77, there was a clearly marked path to the tunnel and it was long, wide and easy. Next we had to cross 79 but we couldn't find the tunnel. After some searching, we found the tunnel but it seemed to be full of water. The women noticed that there was a raised path on the side where we could walk without getting wet. The problem was that either we had to walk a couple hundred extra meters to go around the water or walk through the water. Shira got new hiking boots so this was a good opportunity to make use of them. She and Ahuva walked through the water while Gershon and I went around. 

As usual, we did not see many hikers or other people. At one point, we saw a woman who appeared to be Scandivanian hiking by herself. We ran into a couple families who were out for joy hikes. We also saw lots of cows. It was weird because every time we saw cows, there were these white birds hanging out with them. Despite all of our deep knowledge of animals and birds, none of us could identify what they were. Based on a google search, I now believe that they were cattle egrets who apparently like to hang around cows to eat the tics and flies who bug the cow. 

We also passed by the kever of R' Yehuda Hanasi (though somehow Ahuva and Shira didn't realize). Pictured are the four of us on the outskirts of the beautiful (you can't really tell from the picture) city of Hoshaya. 

We finished the hike around 1. We walked about 22 kilometers and knocked off 19.5 kilometers from the shvil. We have now completed about 180 kilometers total on the shvil out of about 1080.