Now that we have been home for about 3 weeks recovering from our Great Israel Experience and the sickness that followed -- it's time to answer the ever present question - what's next?
They say that spring is right around the corner and I see it officially starts next week. As I have mentioned before ... it may look like spring in the southeast or southwest - but in Maine in still looks an awful lot like winter. We could just hunker down and suffer through the next month of cold weather and on again off again snowstorms while continuing to tinker on my latest motorcycle project ... or we could break Winne out of her ice and snow storage jail and head south to find real spring!
Just in case ... I went over to visit Winne yesterday to say Hi. There she was quietly waiting, last week's snow melting off her roof, just itching to be brought back to life. I went inside to check things out and everything looked just as we left it several months ago. The solar panel appeared to be doing it's job keeping the batteries charged up so I went ahead and turned the key to see if the engine would come to life. And it did! Always a good sign!
Since I was on a roll I let the air system fill the suspension air bags and then shut off the engine. With the air bags filled it is easier to remove the tire covers -- so I shoveled enough snow to get to the wheels and got that chore completed. Since I just recently completed getting the engine back together on my motorcycle project,
and since the weather doesn't look too bad over the next week, and since the potential for finding warm weather down south sounds pretty inviting ... I guess that provided the answer!
So .... the new plan is to bring Winne home tomorrow ... spend a week getting her -- and us -- ready to go and hit the road heading south around next Thursday. We will follow our normal routine getting as far south as possible as fast as possible -- always dependent on the weather.
We are not planning on this being a long trip. We will probably spend a week or so warming up in southern Alabama and then head to the hill country of Texas for some more R&R. Since our grand daughter Kyla will be graduating from her Hospital Corpsman "A" School around that time we will spend some time visiting with her before she heads off for her next naval adventure in Hawaii.
Then we will take a few weeks to find our way back home -- just in time for grandson Bailey's graduation from Norwich University in Vermont in early May.
After that? .... I think it will be time to settle in and enjoy spring and summer here in Maine - The Way Life Should Be!
8 and A-Wake-Up!
The last several days of our Great Israel Experience were spent touring the northern part of the country with our base of operations in Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee. Once again, most of the stops included some amazing historical biblical sites such as Nazareth, The Mount of Beatitudes, Megiddo, Magdala, and Capernaum where we visited sites where Jesus began his ministries. And then there were the historical sites at Caesarea on the Mediterranean Sea featuring ancient Roman era ruins of Herod's Castle, the amphitheater, the hippodrome, and the aquaduct ... all built to Roman standards of the day. Absolutely amazing!!
We also visited the Jordan River at Yardenit where many of the group participated in being baptised or re-baptised by one or more of the clergy traveling with us - including David Huckabee and Al Denson our traveling piano player.
As I think I have mentioned before - the leaders of our tour (Mike and Janet Huckabee, their son David, and several of the entertainers) traveled on our tour buses with us as we visited the various sites and would change buses from day to day. One day we might travel with Mike Huckabee and the next day Janet would ride with us.
On the day we visited Nazareth David Huckabee and Al Denson rode with us and tried to entertain the group with their version of joke telling. Unfortunately for them - the Yellow Bus just wasn't that into their humor that day and many jokes fell flat. To make up for their comedy failure David and Al decided to treat the bus to a special meal upon our return to the bus after walking about a re-creation of biblical Nazareth. It seems that David knew that there are a couple of non-kosher McDonald's restaurants in Israel and that one of them was in Nazareth. While we were touring - David and Al had gone to the local McDonald's and purchased 100 cheeseburgers to share with us on the Yellow Bus. They more than made up for their poor jokes!
And then there were the more modern sites such as "The Valley of Tears" - site of the 1973 invasion of Israel by Syrian tanks and troops. Pretty awesome seeing the lush valley, complete with rusty abandoned Syrian and Israeli tanks here and there and viewing Syria only about a half mile in the distance. One of the group's tour guides was a young tank commander during those days and shared his story about being rousted from his bed, saying goodbye to his family, and commanding his tank to defend his country within a matter of hours. Such was the life of a "common" Israeli in 1973. And this lifestyle continues to this day. After graduating high school each Israeli child serves in the military. The boys serve for a minimum of 3 years and the girls for 2 years. They understand that they live in a tough neighborhood and must be constantly on guard against those who wish them serious harm!
I never felt unsafe while we were in Israel. But being just a half mile from Syria and Lebanon was rather "interesting." Add to that the acres and acres of fields in the Golan Heights region with signs telling you not to enter due to the potential for coming across a land mine ... and you might get an uneasy feeling or two. You really can't fully understand why the people of Israel defend their borders with such zeal (remember those "zeal"-ots) until you see how truly close the bad guys live!
Our final day in Israel was more than busy. We started with a morning trip to the Mount of Beatitudes for a morning service, added a walk along the Sea of Galilee, visited a museum housing a 2000 year old boat that has recently been raised from the bottom of the Sea, took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee - complete with our traveling band, had a fantastic send off dinner in Tiberius ... and then hit the road for our 90 minute drive to Tel Aviv and the looong trek home.
Once at the airport the air-travel fun began once again. We and our bags must have been scanned and screened at least four times before the final screening at the boarding gate ... but it really did go fairly smoothly.
It was about this time that the cold symptoms started to hit me. Nothing bad yet -- but I could feel it coming!
So there we were -- back on the same plane - with the same size seats, the same in-flight movies, and the same little airplane on the screen that took forever to fly those 5,600 miles back to New Jersey. Actually it took about an hour longer since we had to fly into a headwind all the way home.
Once we arrived in New Jersey the cold was really starting to come on strong ... but we weren't done yet! First we had to find our checked bag, get through customs, get back through security so we could check in for our next flight to Washington, DC, fly to DC, walk briskly for what seemed like miles to our next boarding gate for our flight to Portland, and then fly back over NJ and back to Maine over pretty much the same path as we had just traveled from Tel Aviv!
But we made it! My cold symptoms may have been in full bloom by then ... but we made it!
It has been a little over two weeks now since we made it back ... and since then Peggy has joined me in trying to survive this nasty cold. Hopefully we will both be fully recovered soon.
In spite of the return home sickness ... and the misery of the loong flights each way ... we both agree that our Israel Experience was truly one of a lifetime and well worth any negatives along the way.
But I'm not ready to do it again any time soon!
Day 5 of our trip was travel day. We would be leaving the city of Jerusalem and our rooms at The David Citadel Hotel, traveling in our tour bus east into the area known as "The West Bank." This area has been under Israel's control since the 6 day War in 1967 but have never been "annexed" into the State of Israel as have lands also taken during the 6 day war up around the Sea of Galilee - known as the Golan Heights. So we traveled east for about 30 miles to the Dead Sea and then turned south for another 30 or so miles to the Masada National Park. The drive was more than interesting as we started in Jerusalem at about 2,500 ft elevation and ended at the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth at -1,400 ft elevation!
Why Masada? I'll save you the long version history lesson here and give you the Readers Digest version. A very long time ago (around the first century BC) King Herod built himself a huge Castle and military fortification atop this Mesa (elevation about 0 Feet) at the edge of the Dead Sea. It seemed Herod was planning on an emergency exit from Jerusalem at some time in the future and needed an escape plan that included food, water, and a defensive position. Not that long after the fortress was built, the local Judeans had upset their Roman occupiers enough that Rome sent a legion or two to put the Hebrews in their place -- once and for all! It seems that the leaders of these Hebrew dissidents was a group called the Zealots who decided to leave Jerusalem before the Romans arrived and what better place to run to than Herod's Fortress at Masada. So about a thousand of them took over the fortress, complete with its food and water supply and hunkered down for the arrival of the Romans. When the Romans did arrive they found the Zealots defiantly atop their mountain top fortress. Needless to say - they were not a group of happy campers. Not wanting to simply wait them out ... the Romans started a 4 year long process to build a ramp up the mountainside to the walls of the fortress in order to break through and take care of the Zealots. You can still see the remains of that ramp today. Just building this ramp was a pretty impressive construction project! Those Romans must have been really upset!
So the story goes that when the Romans were about to breech the walls and enter Masada - the Zealots met and decided that rather than be subjected to the slavery of the Romans they would die as free men - and so they did. The men killed their families, then each other, and the final man fell on his sword.
Today - soldiers of the Israeli Armoured Corps completing their basic training complete their swearing in ceremony atop Masada with the declaration "Masada shall never fall again."
I suspect they mean it!
So ... we rode the gondola up the mountain (there is the "snake trail" for those of you who want the hike), we toured the ruins, and we rode the gondola back to the info center and made our way back to our buses.
Then we started our trek north - stopping first at Qumran - site of discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and then Ein Gedi where those who wanted could float in the Dead Sea and partake of a mud bath from the mineral laden mud beneath the surface. That didn't excite us much so we simply enjoyed a walk about.
Then it was back to the buses for our final leg of the trip - about 75 miles north to the Sea of Galilee, the City of Tiberius, and the Gai Beach Hotel.
Our bags had already arrived and been placed in our rooms at the hotel when we arrived and dinner was being served. So we cleaned up a bit from our long day of touring, had our fill of more interesting kosher choices at the dinner buffet, and found ourselves looking for a good night's sleep!
