Shavuot is the holiday marking the beginning of the harvest (among other things). For this reason, it is celebrated quite extensively in moshavim and kibutzim in Israel. Israel kept telling me that I MUST come to Eliad for Shavuot. So, I did...In Eliad, every year, they have a rodeo in Shavuot. A real rodeo. OK, they don't actually send the cowboys to catch a raging steer but they do have some people from the moshav riding horses and competing against each other doing various things - like having the horses ride around cones as fast as possible, getting water from a jug on one side and bringing it back without spilling to the other side, and so on. Fun. Israel "donated" his three horses for the rodeo and he and his daughter both rode on two of the three horses in the rodeo. Israel had a lot of fun doing this as can be seen in the pictures below:
After the rodeo they held a grass mower competition. Yup, no mistake here. Did Israel win? Well, no... Someone brought a state-of-the-art grass mower and all the other competitors didn't have a chance really. But still, as you can see, they were not discouraged by this:
The next day, Sharon and Seva came to visit. You will have to take my word for it that they came because I'm not allowed to put their pictures on the blog. I can say that we had a chance to eat some nice olives made by Seva and to eat smoked cheese from Georgia, which was delicious. We went to Gamla together - on that day and on the next. Why twice? Well, Israel always likes to go to Gamla but this time Seva wanted to go down to the archaeological findings and we didn't have enough time the first day to do it, so we came again the next day.
Since I've already written about Gamla in a previous post I will focus not on the archaeological site but on the griffin vultures who were set free there on the second day we visited. Gamla has a large population of vultures. One of the birds set free was a bird hatched in captivity and now when it reached maturity was being released. The other one was caught and was being released. Both were being ringed and fitted with wing tags and radio transmitters before being set free. 
Even though the process didn't seem to be particularly pleasant for the vultures we were told that the equipment attached to them doesn't bother them. On the left you can see one of the vultures being fitted with wing tags and a radio transmitter.
Then it was set free:
This fellow was a bit "shell shocked" at first and took a few seconds to get himself oriented and ready to fly. He was actually a bit scary - these birds are quite big - and he took some steps towards us....Then he took flight (you can see its wing tag clearly in both pictures):
In the picture below you can see the transmitter (and the vulture, of course), enlarge the picture and look at its back...):
One of the next days we went to the Hermon. It was my first visit to there ever! How can that be?! I don't know, somehow never got there. It was a bit different than I imagined it somehow, a lot barer. I sort of thought there'd by alpine woods there, but then woods are not exactly our strong point in Israel so I'm not sure how I came up with this vision...
(notice how I keep finding myself on snow capped mountains when going places with Israel... even when elsewhere it's already spring or summer).
We didn't find many trees up there but we did find some pretty flowers
now, if it were up to my knowledge I'd say that the flower on the left is a pretty purple flower (one of my favorite colors, by the way) and the one on the right is a certain poppy. Israel, is more of an expert in what they call "flora and fauna" and so thanks to him I can also add the proper names of these flowers -
The one on the right is called a mountain horned poppy and the one on the left is a mountain ixiolirion but I like its German name: berglilie (lily of the mountains).
By the way, the Golan trail (thought of and created by Israel) starts from Mt. Hermon:
After coming down the mountain we went to have lunch at the Witch and Milkman restaurant in Nimrod. On this day we also went to Kibbutz Ein Zivan and visited Bustan ha-Golan where one can pick cherries. A very nice place to go to with kids.
Another day we went kayaking in the Jordan river with the dogs which was a lot of fun. Both dogs went swimming, were shaking their coats off, rubbing themselves in the ground and getting them and everything around them very wet and doggy smelling. We didn't take any photos on this trip (the camera would have gotten wet so you'll just have to imagine it in your mind...). One of the people running the kayak renting place was patting Tzachi (see his picture on the left from another trip). At some point Israel called Tzachi over. The guy looked up surprised - Is this Tzachi from Eliad?? it seemsTzachi is a celebrity dog... (the guy knows the dog through Israel's son...).One of the days on the way back to Eliad we went to the Butmeya water reservoir. The place is very tranquil and pretty. Recently, a group of Israeli air force cadets went over there to clean a lot of garbage in a volunteer project following a hike they took in the Golan.
I will leave you with two final pictures from this great week in the Golan with Israel, one of me on top of the world (well, maybe just the top of our small country...) and the other of the sun setting over Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee taken by Israel from Mitzpe Hashalom near Kfar Haruv:
By the way, all the pictures were taken by Israel except the ones in the rodeo which were taken by his neighbor, Lucy.