A Long Day

Thursday was our last day of touring in Israel. We visited the Valley of Elah. This is where the Phillistines stole the Ark of the Covenant, but then put it on a wagon and chased the oxen to the borders of their territory and let the oxen wander back down the valley to return the Ark.

On our way out of town Bob took a picture of a sign that caught his fancy.

This is a playground called the monster playground. We saw other playgrounds in Israel that had brightly coloured tanks that were captured during wars. They painted the tanks and put them on the playground for the children to play in.

There is an organization called JNF (Jerusalem National Forestry?) which collects money to reforest hills that had been clear cut during the time the Turks controlled the land. Some of our tour group purchased trees for $10.00 each in memory of some of their relatives. We went up to the area where they were planting and our group planted 23 trees (Oak or Almond). We saw a big memorial to JFK and many trees planted in memory of Kennedy family members.


We also went to Beit Shemish. This is where David defeated Goliath. The Israelites were on top of the cliff in the picture below and the Philistines were on the other side of the valley.

Another site we visited was the Bell caves. These caves were man made by people getting building materials from under a layer of hard rock. They made a small hole through the layer of hard rock and then started taking out the limestone in concentric circles getting bigger and bigger as they went.

This is a picture of one of the holes at the top of the cave. It has been covered so it won't be a hazard to people who walk in the area.

Below is a diagram of how they were made.

We had the luck of getting to the caves at the same time as two busloads of school children, so the cave rang with noise.

Every school field trip has to have a person with a gun and a paramedic with it. Below are the ones with the group at the cave. They relaxed at the opening (I mean they kept watch at the opening ) while the children went inside.

Later we had a chance to pray at the Western Wall. There were many more females than there were males. There were long lineups on the female side.

Our last adventure of the day was to visit the Western Wall Tunnels. Most of the western wall in underground now. Part of the Arab section of the old city is on top. It was very interesting to go through the tunnels, but I was certainly glad to get out. Shown below is the entrance to the tunnels.

After going through these tunnels we decided we didn't want to wade through Hezekiah's tunnel the next day. It was darker than the Western Wall tunnels and the water was apparently knee deep.