Sunday, February 25, 2018

Wadi Attun

After a very late night in which Elise and I attended our first Black and White Ball, we were offered up a day too beautiful too squander. Not that the kids would have let us waste it away in bed, anyway.

We headed down the Dead Sea Highway to one of the many wadis. Pulling off the side of the road, many of the trailheads are not marked. One needs a guide book or Bedouin prescience to know where to bounce off the highway.

"Wadi" means riverbed in Arabic, and the hikes follow streams and rivers to their sources from the Dead Sea. Wadi Attun is a relatively unknown hike leading to a hot spring. We only saw a few other hikers along the path. It isn't a long hike, but it does require some scrambling over rocks and boulders which can make it a little more challenging for small legs. Clementine has earned some street cred on the trails of Shenandoah, but this was a different sort of challenge, one that, perhaps, is best tackled without a turkey sandwich in one hand, which is how she attempted to make her way back down the trail.




The landscape was as impressive as many families dedicate entire summer vacations and many thousands of dollars to see. Clementine and I spent most of the hike up trying to keep our shoes dry which ended up being, mostly, a useless exercise. Sam and Peter, on the other hand, took the direct -- and perhaps wiser route -- by forging straight up the wadi, through ankle-deep water. 



A short ways up the trail, we came to the first of two pools in the river. The kids wasted no time stripping down to their swimwear. With the exception of Peter who decided to just swim with all his clothes on. 

The water, fed by a hot spring, was bath water-warm.




The second pool was a little larger with a waterfall. The kids spent a couple of hours splashing in the water. They made dams with the rocks, forming new pools, and played in the mud. After several weeks of cold, rainy weather that kept us cooped up, the sun and the water was just what the doctor ordered. 




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