camping

We had a very nice vacation. We didn't go fishing. Thursday we headed up to Nimrod's castle. It has nothing to do with the legendary Nimrod and was built by the Muslims in 1237 or something like that. The place was enormous and a long time ago it would have been gorgeous. They really put in a massive effort to make it look nice. We spent about 2.5 hours at the castle and then tried to find a place that the kids could jump in the water. We're members of the national parks association, so we thought we wouldn't have a problem, but the first place we went to, Charoshet Tal, said they give a 50% discount to members and they were only open for another hour. The second place we went to, Nachal Senir (Chitzbani), had just closed. So we decided to go to the campground at Kibbutz Dafna and let the kids play in the river there. The river running through the campground was about 2 inches deep. so it was perfect for getting your feet wet and somehow or other the children got soaked, but it wasn't much to speak about.
We met 3 other families there and had a nice bbq in the evening. The fathers took the walkable children on a flashlight hike through the kibbutz, though my littlest walker stopped walking int he middle then when he couldn't even stay on my shoulders any more threw up on me as I carried him. It was just a bit too late for him.
Friday morning, after a failed attempt to get a minyan going, we headed over to nachal hermon (lower banias) and hiked between kibbutz senir and moshav shar yashuv. The water was freezing cold and moving fast. It was a bit of a difficult hike for all the children, but everyone enjoyed themselves (especially jumping into the freezing cold water.) The hike was about 4 hours long and the kids got popsicles when we finished.