Wadi Tripping

We decided last weekend that today we'd go to a wadi. (Wadi, a valley/riverbed that's usually dry) We love going to wadis! Lucy's funny. She misunderstood us once a few months ago and thought we said we were going to "Ha-wadi," like Hawaii...so now every time we say we're going to "a wadi" she gets all squeally and excited and shouts, "Yes, we're going to Hawadi!" 

Today just happened to be one of the only days out of the year that we had a 50% chance of rain in the forecast. We usually have about 5 days of rain in the whole year, so we didn't put a lot of stock in this forecast. But...as you can see...on our drive the clouds were ominous.

 Still. We arrived at the wadi - a different one that we'd originally planned to go to, but what a wonderful "accidental" wadi to go to!  

 It was quite cool for us, in the low 70s, so all the swimming we'd planned to do didn't happen for me and Will. He had this concerned look on his face for most of the trip.

 Just beyond Brad and Will in this picture is what's in the next picture...

 A full-fledged waterfall! It was probably 15-20 feet down to the huge pool.

 Brad didn't jump into that huge pool, but he did jump into another one! 

 And he tried to get Will in...but Will wasn't too interested.

 If you click on this picture and enlarge it, you can see that the white part right in the middle of the picture is another waterfall. ANOTHER WATERFALL! Amazing.

 We headed up towards the 2nd waterfall

 And Brad and Lucy did one jump each

 If it had been a sunny day...

We WILL go back.

 Before this huge cloud rolled in...

The breezes were blowing pretty hard by this point and Lucy was freezing.

Public Service Announcement:

 It's important to note that wadis are super fun - UNTIL it starts raining. Since this is such a desert country and there's so little rainfall, the "soil," which is just sand and rocks, doesn't absorb water well. This can cause major flash flooding. Almost every time it's rained since we've been here, the following week, we've read about drowning deaths in the wadis. These people react to rain like we do to snow in Alabama. And with good reason! No one wants to get caught in a flood! 

 I can actually remember an episode of Bear Grylls talking about how you have to watch for flash floods when you're in a riverbed. You just never know how much it's rained/raining upstream! 

SO TRUE.

 The clouds were beautiful. The rain that was pouring down on us was wonderful. 

And except for my 5 year old F R E A K I N G  O U T because of the rain and how cold she was and oh my goodness, is it gonna flood and we're all gonna drown (she has some fear issues and really takes the story of Noah to heart, despite the promise at the end of the story)...it was amazing!

 We ran back to our car, got the kiddos changed into dry clothes - it was about 66 degrees by this point - and we headed out. We probably could've waited it out, but we wanted to be safe.

I love this picture - even though it's got rain spots on the windshield. See the small tower on the left side of the picture? These are all over our country! They used to be for protection for the villages - lookout towers, I guess. Makes me think of Lord of the Rings (guess my hubby has rubbed off on me). 

 Zoom in on this one, too. This was on the drive home coming down the mountain into the capital city where we live. The water was flowing down off the mountain in waterfalls all around! It was very cool. Lucy loved these, from the safety of the car! 

We're super thankful for the cooler weather and excited to get out on the weekends more. We've gotta take advantage of this amazing weather during this part of the year! 

See... isn't this place gorgeous? Don't you wanna come visit and get out of the miserable 40s of winter in the USA? Come on...