We had no idea what a crazy day we would be in for on Day 3! We had covered a little over 40 of our eventual 70-kilometer-hike, and we were going to push to make it by the end of Day 3. Day 3 was Independence Day in Israel, which meant that the buses from Tiberias (Galilee) to Jerusalem stopped a little after 8pm...and we all wanted to get home earlier rather than later.

Mark was able to briefly talk with the Israeli backpacker about the upcoming trail for the day. The guy had a Hebrew book on the Israel trail and much of our hike was going to be along this trail. He warned us that there was an extremely steep ascent/descent on part of the trail that we might want to avoid, so we found an alternate trail that would cut this section out and make our trip a little shorter as well...or so we thought. The problem with topographical maps is that even though they might be fairly detailed, sometimes the ratio is still not detailed enough to see exactly what kind of ascents/descents you are going to run into!

We started up Mt. Meron for the first couple of hours, reaching the first observation point about an hour into our hike. We took pictures and were feeling pretty good overall that morning.

We continued up the mountain, arriving at various other lookout points, passing an army base, and eventually began our descent down the other side of the mountain. We briefly stopped in a parking lot for water, and then continued along our "alternate route" down, down, down...

The mountains began to give way to countryside, and we found ourselves in little agrarian areas with small vineyards, orchards, and other cultivated pieces of land. We even found an amusing "lazy boy" chair sitting in a field in the middle of nowhere! The most interesting part of this section of our trip was the Druze shepherd who came along the road we were walking on with his big herd of goats. The goats themselves were being quite amusing...as many goats can be, and we said "Good morning" to the shepherd and let the goats pass.