And the Wandering Continues ... 12/20

And now we come to Wednesday the twentieth. This day I did something that I don’t believe I have ever done in my life. Granted, I’ve been doing a lot of those since taking off from the States, but this one was different. I never, not in my wildest dreams, thought I would ever do this.

I got up just to see a sunrise.

Yeah, that’s right. Me, the guy who has to be dragged out of bed by a team of mules or launched from it with dynamite actually chose to get up a full forty-five minutes earlier than I had to in order to see the sunrise.

Here’s the catch. I got up to see the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee. The Kibbutz that we’re staying at is on the western edge of the Sea of Galilee so, obviously, it’s the perfect position to watch the sunrise. I just couldn’t pass that up. Granted, I was so excited about that thought when the alarm actually went off and it was still dark outside. I think the thoughts that were foremost at that moment were along the lines of murdering the machine known as the alarm clock. But it was very much worth it.

Now please don’t kill me for this, but I didn’t take my camera with me. I went simply to enjoy the sunrise and be a bit contemplative. It really was amazing and very much worth while. Again, don’t kill me for not taking pictures. Beth got pictures of it that morning and I do believe I will be getting up for it again before we leave so I’ll take pictures then. Either way, I will have pictures of the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee.

After quite the interesting breakfast (and no, I did not even try the smoked fish) we departed for a day traveling through the northern regions of Israel. We began by traveling around the southern tip and then running road reminiscent of highway twenty up the eastern edge. About half way between the southern tip and the northern end we took a six or seven kilometer detour up into the Golan Heights in order to see the views of the Sea of Galilee from up there. It was, to drastically understate, spectacular. I thought the sunrise had been worth seeing. This was better by far.

Retracing our steps back to the highway (if you can call it that) we continued north until we came within sight of Mount Hermon. For me, that was really cool. Having lived in the Mount Hermon of California for so long it seemed somehow extraordinary to see the “real” one. I did get pictures of that.

From there we continued on to Ceserea Phillipi.

“Upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” ~ Jesus Christ

Hmmm…no, I won’t go into a sermon here and now. Many of you have probably already heard my newest tangent involving that proclamation of Jesus at Ceserea Phillipi. For those of you who haven’t, I’ll probably wind up posting about it on one of my blogs soon. Or, if you were at Bible School, you heard most of it from Steve Byler. Yes, I will admit, he’s the one who got me started on the whole thing.

Anyways, I really enjoyed seeing that area and putting a lot of the pieces into place for a lot of the things I’ve been thinking recently. That was probably my favorite biblical site that we’ve seen so far.

Then came what has, for me, been the best stop of the entire trip; Nimrod Fortress. Although it completely lacks any biblical significance, Nimrod Fortress was a Crusader castle. Yes Dallas, be jealous. I spent about an hour and a half walking around the ruins of a castle from the time of the crusades. Had you been able to keep up, watching me would have been something akin to watch Ezra at a giant playground. I was pretty excited.

I could have spent another four or five hours there without hardly knowing it. I didn’t even begin to explore all of the areas you were allowed in. But alas, it was an extra stop and we didn’t have much time there.

Very close to the fortress was Tel Dan. That was our next stop. The Tel itself wasn’t much different than the others we have visited. However, to get there we walked through a beautiful nature preserve full of streams and waterfalls. There was even a stone lined pool about halfway up the path that was absolutely stunning. It really made me wish I was a photographer. With how much of an amateur I am at photography I doubt that I was really able to capture it. I hope Beth got some good shots.

From Tel Dan we traveled west; way west. In fact, we traveled so far west that if we had driven any more west we would have gotten very wet. That’s right, we drove to the Mediterranean Sea. Rosh Hanikra was, quite literally, breathtaking. The cliffs were so white and the water was such a clear blue…I don’t think I can even describe it. Between the three of us with cameras, we went crazy here. Lots and lots of pictures were taken to say the least.

After looking at the tourist attraction there, we drove down a few hundred meters and spent nearly an hour enjoying the rocky beach below the cliffs and getting pictures of the sun setting below the Mediterranean. Again, the water was so clear and so blue that I just wanted to jump in and swim. However, the patrol boat about two hundred meters offshore kept me from doing so. With the Israeli-Lebanon border not even a kilometer north, I had a feeling that they wouldn’t take too kindly to someone in the water. That and the wind was rather cold. So yeah, I didn’t swim. Wanted to, but didn’t.

Once again we drove back to the Kibbutz in the dark and once again I simply crashed. For some reason I am really getting tired easily on this trip. I’m going to chalk it up to jet lag. Yeah, that sounds good…