First Stop: The Desert

Day 1

Kayla and Dustin were up and at'em this morning. By the time I got up at 7:30am, Dustin had already jogged around the compound, done his Tai Chi routine, and fixed himself some breakfast with eggs and leftovers he found in the fridge. He's a brave soul, you never know how long those take away cartons have been in there. Kayla was up by 6:00am and David had already been up since 4:00am. So, I was the late riser if you don't count Kristi. We had to wake her up at 9:00am so that she could get ready for our first desert trek of the week. First stop, the petro station which was a sight to see. There were two gas pumps that looked as though they had been plowed over. We verified with our attendant that yes indeed, an errant car had taken out two tanks while out of control. Our next stop (or drive through rather) was The Oryx Farm in the middle of no where. The story is that this is a sanctuary place for some endangered animals, as well as a few other that aren't. There were emus, ostriches, red deer, zebras, antelopes, oryxes, and oodles and oodles of camels. You don't get out of the car. You just drive around the perimeter. In the middle of all this desert across from the farm is a tomato garden. It was so lush and green, really contrasting with the rocky desert area. We then rode out to a dried up lake bed. Don't even ask me the story about that. I have no idea when in time there could have been standing water in this country! It must have been before Al Gore invented global warming. That's Kristi, Dustin, and Kayla in the lake bed doing what they do best for me...posing. Oh, and that's Dustin looking for a tree in the desert. Good luck, honey, I think a dune will have to do. Just in case you've never been fortunate enough to run across a camel footprint in the desert, I included a picture for you with size comparisons . And there's Dustin, feeding his first camel and with no camel bites to show for it, thanks be to God. We found out first hand why they have camel crossing signs posted.

On to the ruins of an old Qatari settlement. Along with the old homes were rock carvings. There were pits carved out of the rocks that were used for some type of marbles game. The picture posted is of a boat. I would have never figured that out, but our fearless leaders Mike and Freda offered this information to us. That would be them in the picture in the standard desert safari attire. David and I are going to definitely have to get with the program in that department. Maybe one day when Mike and Freda retire, we will be the desert guides. Yes, we were along on the trip , who else would pick up the tab for the kids at Chili's at day's end?