2024-03-28 32 35

Location

In a field northwest of Afula.

Participants

Yerushalmi (talk) 11:59, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Plans

Train day, simple enough. I have to go to Haifa anyway to drop off my wife's artwork, so I'll take a further train from there to Afula, then take a bus to the area, walk to the point, do the reverse to get home.

Expedition

I had enormous trouble sleeping the night before - in fact, I don't think I slept at all. This did not bode well.

But the rest of the expedition went almost without a hitch. I took the train to Tel Aviv (davening Shacharit with the train minyan), then the train to Haifa. I walked from the train station to the art gallery, dropped off the artwork, and walked back.

Haifa is, as always, GPS-jammed. This gave me some trouble using Moovit, but not too much trouble. I took a train *not* to Afula but rather to Kfar Yehoshua, and from there one bus to another bus to Ginigar Intersection north of the point, Ginigar being some very small town I've never heard of.

Moovit estimated a 77-minute walk to the point, which is among the longest I've done. But it was a mostly-straight walk down a mostly-straight road between the fields. Every ten minutes or so a massive truck would go by and I'd have to stand on the side of the road to let it pass; they were all going back and forth to the same place off in the distance and dumping something, but I couldn't see what.

Eventually I reached the field I needed to enter - hoping against home that it wouldn't be covered in crops - and to my delight it was not! The earth was dark brown, clearly freshly turned, and hard as a rock. Not only that, but there was a path *within* the field that led directly to the point!

Well, not directly, as I discovered when I walked down it. I had to go about five steps off to the right when I reached the area of the point. But still, successful reaching of the coordinates.

Unfortunately, this place is even more middle-of-nowhere than my usual hashes. So I couldn't take the train back home, or I wouldn't reach Jerusalem in time to pick up #3 from her after-school program. I ended up taking the bus, and falling asleep almost immediately. Then getting woken up by phone call after phone call for the next twenty minutes. Not a single call the entire time I'm in the field, but when I'm trying to sleep? Typical.

Eh, there was still plenty of time on the long bus ride. I slept the rest of the way. Massive traffic jam at the entrance to Jerusalem.

Photos

The view from above the platform at Kfar Yehoshua train station
The main path between the fields leading towards the point
Some kind of lake or reservoir
Same lake
Half-panorama at the lake
Three-quarters panorama at the lake
Apparently the path I've been walking is an official hiking path
The path to the left, to the point, is a concrete bridge over a creek on the left. The sign claims (rather dubiously) that the path to the right is a major highway.
The creek under the bridge
The point is in this field somewhere. No crops!
A sort of half-road-thing, in the middle of the field, going straight to the point
Proof
Panorama at the point
An amusing glitch on the sign on the bus when we got to Jerusalem


Thu 28 Mar 2024 in 32,35: 32.6415694, 35.2576104 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox