A walk through the Tel Dan Nature Reserve is a very rewarding experience. It is like stepping into a wonderland where paths are decorated with tall treetops reaching for the sky, their leaves and branches keeping the ground shady and refreshingly cool even at noon on a hot summer's day, while beside them jumping streams feeding a running river.
The Dan River is the largest and most important river among the three rivers sources of the Jordan River. It is fed by snow and rain which fall on Mount Hermon, the tallest mountain in Israel.
The Tel Dan Nature Reserve is only 120 acres large. It offers four vastly different hiking trails, parts of which are wheelchair accessible. The longest of them being particularly attractive. This runs through dense vegetation, over wooden bridges and a number of caves to the source of the Dan, which has been left in its natural, unspoiled state, and from there up to Tel Dan. Excavations which have been in progress here since 1965 have brought to light the remains of a town gate(Canaanite city of Laish) of the 10th century B.C. on the south side of the site, from which a flight of steps leads up to a platform measuring 18.7m/61ft by 18.2m/60ft, probably the remains of an Israelite shrine.
The Tel Dan Nature Reserve is on Route 99 (Kiryat Shemona-Mas\'ade), about 11 kilometers east of Hamezudot junction, near Kibbutz Dan.
