Wadi Aboul

Our original plans have been changed as I got invited to be the Dudgeon Master for a Game of D&D on Monday so that changed the at trip. Our fried who usually goes with us want to go to Jazira today and camping on Wednesday, so much for following our originally schedule.

We had spent the weekend in the house for the most part. Granted on Saturday Andrew had a birthday party at the Al Ain speedway!! Well it is really like supped up go carts. It turns out Andrew is a good driver at the young age of 13, he came in first for the group of boys who were racing.

While Andrew was racing , the rest of us went off to the new (ish) bawadi mall. We had had lunch already so we milled about the mall before we went to watch Alice in Wonderland. We all enjoyed the movie and had a good time. After the movie we went to buy a birthday present for the birthday party. Mom got sucked in for buying more Zhu Zhu Pet equipment for Ashley.

Wadi Aboul

Well as Grandma has not been up to the Wadi Aboul I decided to take her out to see the fort. The family had been here before and if you want to reed that adventure follow this link

Wadi Aboul

This time we drove most of the way into the wadi so we only had a short walk up to the fort. We did stop and show grandma some of the coll features of the wadi like the pools and the springs that bring p the mineral rich water. It is neat as you can see two pools right next to each other the ones that have the “fresh water”: and the pool that has the mineral rich water.

On to the fort, on the walk up we stopped to grad some fruit from the “Thorns of Christ” tree. The “Thorns of Christ” tree is said to be the tree they made Christ’s Crown of Thorns out of and it is believable as the branches are covered in long thorns and the tree is suited for the desert terrain of the Holy Land. The Fruit is very small and taste in a way like an apple with a bit of a bitter after taste.

On to the Aboul Fort, this place looks great and it is hard to believe that is has not been used or maintained for more than 50 years. The fort is in a great location on a small hill overlooking the formerly large oasis. It is a great place to explore as most of the fort is still in tack and you can get up to the top of one of the towers in the fort. A nice thing about the fort is that it has new occupants. There were several bats and geckos. This was a main selling point to the kids. And we were able to see several bats up close and personal. We got some shots of the bats but he picture I am posting I lifted off a newspaper article about bats in the UAE. One of the nice shots I have is of the interior of the mud brick wall where you can see that they stacked rocks in the wall to make it fortified. It makes sense as the people in the village would come here in times of raiding parties.

After the trip I decided to do some recon as I had not been to many of the site we are planning on going to this week and next. We ended scouting out all of the sites for this week just driving up to them and making sure we can find them.

Well today we are going to go off to the Jazirah Oasis GPS: N24 19 13.3 E56 09 06.7
This is an easy to get to site that has a great weir (dam) and pool that is caused by the dam. It is a great place to have a picnic and swim. The best part is that the oasis is a wonderful place to explore where you can see truly ancient homes and structures. You do nto need 4x4 to get to the site it is an esay drive with several stunning vistas.