...we executed a navigation mission using the stars...

(Continued from this post)

After the police showed up, we reexplained ourselves, waited while they entered who knows what into the computer system in association with our ids, and tried to scope out our surroundings.  We knew that the stork was not in the location of the last received SMS, and we knew approximately where it was based on the signal from the pinger.  We just had to figure out how to get to it.  The trails off the restricted road were rocky, and although the army and the police gave us permission to continue our mission in that direction (away from Jordan), they didn't seem promising.  We decided to drive back down Rt. 90 a little ways (perpendicular to where we were on the restricted road).  We pulled over to listen for the stork with the pinger, and as we were listening with our antenna raised, another police vehicle came to a short stop next to us to find out what we were doing.  My lab-mate explained again what we were up to, and once again we were in the clear.

The pinger told us that we needed to head into the bush, the area between the two roads that was full of trees, sand, rocks, and ponds.  We pulled off the main road and drove a little bit on the rocky trail before stopping again to listen with the pinger.  We were about 30 feet from the car, on a hill, and the car was about 15 feet from the road.  As we were listening for the stork signal (which we heard) and trying to download data with the other antenna (which wasn't successful), we heard a car zoom by with music blaring.  We then heard a screech of breaks; the car proceeded to reverse and stop parallel to our seemingly abandoned vehicle.  We could tell that the drivers were assessing the situation and deciding what to do about this abandoned car.  We quickly realized what was going on and began shining our flashlights towards our car to make our presence known.  Seeing this, the other vehicle zoomed back on its way.  We, however, decided to get back in the car and drive it farther off the road before we went for a hike, thus preventing others from seeing it and thinking about breaking in.

My lab-mate did a bit of good driving and a bit of scary driving, and after a few bumps, a ton of rocks, some bushes, and dust, we came to a stop.  Out we went with our gear to try and find the stork.  We listened to the pinger and made an estimate of the stork's location. We needed to get close to the stork but at the same time we needed to avoid interference like tree.  A hill near the stork's roosting spot would have been ideal.  There were several such hills, but in order to get to them, we would have had to cross through thick brush.  We decided that it might be wiser to try from the other dirt roads we saw off of the restricted access road.  There was no way we could drive down them in the car, but at least the walking might be a bit easier, so we climbed back into our dented car and retraced our bumpy tracks.

When we got back to the first dirt road, it was already 2:15a.  We only had 45 minutes left to find the stork.  The car was not in a secluded area this time, and although my lab-mate and I didn't discuss it until much later in the night, we were both nervous.  I took my wallet and binoculars along with me although I didn't need them and would thus be carrying extra weight because I was too nervous about leaving them in the car.  We were also each equipped with an antenna and attachment (the pinger and the data download-er) and our flashlights.  We drank some water and then were off at a brisk pace.  

We quickly came to two large salt water ponds (we were very near to the Dead Sea), and joining them was a little channel.  It was too wide to cross so my lab-mate decided we should go around.  Looking to the left and the right, we picked a direction and started to walk.  About a minute and a half into our walk, we saw a pile of wooden pallets stacked on the ground.  I suggested to my lab-mate that we build a raft-bridge type thing to use to cross the channel.  He was quite skeptical, especially when the bridge was a bit short and we had to take a big jump, but we pulled it off and saved a good twenty minutes which was important because time was running out.  

Once we made it across, we listened for the pings and continued on our way.  The pings led us through the thick brush we were trying to avoid, through reeds and mud and sand, over hills, and through more dense shrubbery.  At one point we lost the stork and had to retrace our steps.  We weren't making much progress, and at 2:45a my lab partner said that we should probably just head back to the car.  I wasn't taking that though because we had already almost been arrested twice, crossed a pond, collected ridiculous amounts of twigs in our hair as we passed through the reeds and trees, and climbed small mountains.  He agreed, and we continued on until we saw a few tall hills.  We climbed to the first one (they were sandy and it was hard to get footing because there was no solid ground), listened, tried to download, and failed.  At the second one we listened and saw that the signal was pointing strongly in the direction of the third one.  We were minutes away from 3a and decided not to waste time trying to download there.  We practically ran to the third hill and got there just in time to hear the last pings.  We had a direction in which to aim the antenna for downloading.  The question was were we close enough and high enough?

At first it didn't seem like we were.  After about five minutes, the device recognized that the stork was nearby but it wasn't downloading anything.  My lab-mate told me to sit down and relax and that he would keep holding the antenna in a last ditch effort (usually recognition and downloading happens pretty quickly).  As I was sitting and watching the screen of the downloading device, I suddenly screamed with joy.  The data from the stork had started to download.  Without moving a muscle or wiggling the antenna, my lab-mate also celebrated as we waited for the data to finish downloading.  Then we had a big hug and a rest before heading back to the car.  Or attempting to head back to the car.

It was so Israeli when we had to plan a full-on navigation mission to find our car.  We saw the lights by which we parked and we saw all of the trees between us and those lights.  We looked at two alternative routes to the left and the right, picked the left one, and mapped it in the stars.  We began walking and got off to a good start.  The ground was sandy but not too soft or wet.  We came to some bushes, but they weren't too dense.  We did get turned around a bit, but with a look up at the sky, we straightened ourselves out.  Then the going got a bit harder.  The ground got softer and slipperier.  At one point we had to cross a small valley.  My lab-mate went first and warned me that it was wet.  I went a different way hoping for more solid ground only to feel myself sinking.  And then, as I struggled to pick up my foot, my shoe was sucked off.  My lab-mate is the best though.  He found a place to recross, trace my steps and find my shoe.  I was covered in mud, and so was my shoe, but I had it back and couldn't be happier.

As we continued along, we came to more slippery, wet sand.  My lab-mate told me not to follow too closely.  Later he told me it was because he was nervous he might fall in, and he didn't want me to get sucked in with him.  We came to the point in our journey to the left where we needed to cut right to get to the car.  We tried to do this but the cut-through was similar to the channel we crossed earlier, only this time, it was wider and we didn't have any pallets.  I was getting exhausted and praying we didn't need to turn around and take the right path; my lab-mate was getting dispirited too, but we pushed on, and finally came to the restricted road.  We were definitely back at the part where we should not have been, but we were on solid ground and could see our car.  The last ten minutes or so of the walk we discussed our fear that the car would be gone, and seeing it in the distance was such a relief.  When we got there, we loaded up, drove to the nearby gas station to wash up and celebrate with ice cream, and then headed home.  We got back in the car a bit after 4a, and I got back to Jerusalem around 5:15a exhausted and filthy, but it couldn't have been a better night.

Saturday night, we weren't so lucky...