OK - so here is the run-down of Day 2. As you can see, I did not take as many pictures of Day 2 (so I have added some of Amanda's pictures too) because it was probably the biggest "downer" of our time in the sense that we had to hike on a hot highway for a lot of the day and were in "civilization" too much instead of on a trail. Not only that, but I definitely got heat exhausted (despite drinking lots of water), and ended up with a terrible headache by late afternoon...but to backtrack...

We left between 8-9am in the morning. When we packed up camp, we noticed that Ryan had fashioned his knife/bamboo spear during the night to ward off predators since we put him in the "food" tent as bait...he he. He didn't have to use it though :) We first walked though Ein Tamir (Tamir Spring) near our camp and took pictures of the pools of water there (the first 5 pictures are Amanda's: the first two are where we actually camped on the first night, and the last three are at Ein Tamir).

Aubrey's Pix:

Our trail wound through a valley or sorts with the creek next to us for a few miles (kilometers) and then we hit a paved "fire road" of sorts that made a steep ascent up the hills. We hiked on this road for quite a while (and everyone was out of water besides Mark and me...and we were rationing by then). When we reached the top of the hill, we came upon this cookie-cutter neighborhood, that was totally void of people anywhere, and a loud speaker was booming through the whole neighborhood giving announcements in Hebrew. It was rather eerie - like somehthing out of "A Wrinkle in Time" or "Z for Zachariah"...or one of those sci-fi types of novels. Needless to say, we continued on to real civilization so that we could buy more water and food.

After asking directions in town (Ma'alot) and walking a few miles, we reached a giant Supersal (chain grocery store). It would have been the moment in some cheesy moment where the traveling, tired caravan spots the beautiful castle in the woods, and you hear angelic voices saying, "Awwwwwwww..." Yeah, a little over-dramatic, but we were hungry and thirsty.

We all stocked up, re-packed our backpacks, ate lunch, and had to continue hiking on the road through town (still uphill). When we reached the top of the hill, we walked down a number of sidestreets and staircases through neighborhoods until we reached the bottom of the hill, and we then had to walk along a (black asphalt) main highway up another loooonnnng, hot hill. We stopped at the top under some trees for a break and snack and then continued along the highway down the hill and up another one for another many miles until we reached the Druze town of Hurfish.

By the time we reached Hurfish, it was a few short hours before sunset, and I had a terrible headache and was heat exhausted. We all bought icecream, drank water, and walked to the far side of town (Amanda's pictures below).

FINALLY, we got off the main road and onto a dirt road that led back to our trail. We had to run through a field of little flies that were really thick so you had to squint and keep running and swatting the air in front of you - that was fun. Then we got into a canopy area of extremely thick underbrush where you couldn't move anywhere to the left or the right - and it would have been impossible to get through without a trail. By this time, the sun was setting, so it was extra dark for us, and we were trying to quickly make it through the underbrush to the base of Mt. Meron for the night. We covered a huge amount of distance (very quickly) in the last two hours of our hike that day. When we came out of the brush and climbed a hill, we found ourselves next to an Army base at the foot of Mt. Meron. We had to turn on our flashlights by this time to set up camp and collect firewood. We were greeted by more of our curious lynx creatures shortly thereafter and made dinner. During dinner, two other backpackers approached our camp (totally dark by this time) and ended up hanging out with us. One of them was Israeli and one of them from the U.S., and they were hiking the Israel Trail (goes from the top of Israel to the bottom) together. We chatted with them, sat around the fire for a little while, and then went to bed. What a long day...but if only I knew what a long day we were in for on Day 3!!!