Touring in Eretz Yisrael: The Golan Heights: A "Bad Weather" tour: Part 2

After the apple packing plant, we decided to head north, after much debate, and go to the Mt. Hermon to see the snow. We knew the ski site is still closed, as not enough snow has fallen yet, but we wanted to go anyway.

As we were getting hungry, we decided to eat lunch at a restaurant we had found the card from (the various sites and attractions all advertise themselves with series of cards placed in the hotels and at various other sites) that said it was mehadrin and happened to be pretty close to where we were.

As we were driving to the restaurant, we were surprised to the following...

Had we made a wrong turn and ended up in Gush Katif?

It turns out this restaurant is owned by someone who was evicted from Kfar Darom in Gush Katif. He and a few others from his community have made their new home in the Golan, in a moshav called Avnei Eitan, and he opened a restaurant. He decorated the restaurant with memorabilia from Gush Katif, such as the street signs above and other items recalling the days of Gush Katif.

The food was absolutely amazing. We could not ask for a better restaurant to find in the middle of nowhere!

After lunch, we still decided to continue northwards to the Hermon. The road is pretty direct. Up until a certain point. As the road goes through a couple of Druze villages, it starts to get very narrow and full of potholes. And there are very few signs, with a number of turns in the road.


We ended up driving on the continuation of the road through someone's fields, until we got to the following barrier at the top. Yes, we had gone slightly too far east and ended up at the border with Syria! The funny thing was that on the way up this narrow road, we had passed two army jeeps, and a UN jeep. None of them stopped us to ask where we were going, especially since there was nowhere to go!


We turned around and maneuvered our way through the narrow roads to find the narrow turn we had originally missed, and continued on our way.

Finally, we arrived at the Hermon. The sign says no entry after 15:30, and it was already 15:50. And this is still lower down on the Hermon, We still had to make our way up to the higher section to see the snow.

Good thing there is not enough snow, so the whole site is closed. Nobody was manning any gates, so we drove right through to the top. Despite all the other cars that were only driving in the opposite direction - leaving the Hermon, we continued upwards to the snow. We had gone this far, we were not turning back until someone told us to!

At the top, we saw the snow. It was not really that much, and it was mostly frozen over already. We then decided to drive into the site itself, and not just stay in the parking lot. We went a bit further in, and saw the mountainside covered with a light layer of snow.

The army vehicles on the Hermon are white, rather than the classic green..

After that, we headed back down to Tiberias, maneuvering again through the back roads of the Druze villages, to Tiberias for dinner and then collapsing in bed after a long day.

Wednesday only gave us half a day or so to tour before we would have to start heading home..

We decided to go for a drive through some of the southern Golan communities, including Nov, Hispin and Avnei Eitan. Then we went to a village called Natur to see the studio of an artist who works with glass. She makes some beautiful things there, and we got to watch her work for a bit, She was very interesting, and she told us that she and her husband just moved to the Golan a few months ago from central Israel. She described, while she worked with the glass, what it is like to make such a drastic change...

As we left Natur, we found the site of an ancient synagogue behind Natur that was once covered by an Arab village. Now both are in ruins, and the synagogue is being recovered by the antiquities authority. The synagogue is n a site called Um al Kanatir.

As you can see, the synagogue is a protect archaeological site and entry is forbidden. But the fence is broken right under the sign. With nobody around that meant we were going in to get a closer look...

Those archaeologists must really like their beer!

After that, we went to an artists village called Aniam. They have artists there who make beautiful things, from ceramics, to sculptures, to working with jewelery, to painting wood, and more.

Then it was time to start heading back. We drove down through Tiberias, and stopped for a light lunch. Then we headed home, back to our kids and a regular schedule..