Weekend Adventure

Before we left Los Angeles, Craig told me he had planned a surprise weekend trip. I asked him if we were going to the Empty Quarter. When he said yes, I asked if we were going to the resort he'd wanted to take me to when we were in Dubai. I couldn't remember the name of the place, but I knew he had gone on a previous business trip and been disappointed that I hadn't been along to enjoy it with him. He came home from work as early as he could on Thursday, and we headed out for our weekend.

We did manage to leave town before the traffic got too bad. I helped navigate until we escaped the city. We had a long drive through the desert on a wide, two lane road. The shoulders are very wide, allowing slower vehicles to move over to allow faster vehicles to pass. As we drove, we noticed that many of the trucks drove with only one set of tires within the road lines, with the other tires and the majority of the vehicle traveling on the shoulder. I'm not sure if this is for convenience, or if it's a habit, or if there's some legal reason. We merely moved over when another vehicle was willing to fly past the speed monitoring cameras.

A view of the two lane road. The shoulders are much
wider than they appear in the picture.

Along this road, we noticed a variety of sand mitigation methods varying from rows of vegetation to a variety of fences. Some of it was familiar, looking like the hedge rows between fields or the snow fences along the highway in the winter. But having no idea how sand behaves, the use of these methods provided us with plenty of discussion.

We were talking about something else entirely, when this suddenly appeared on my side of the road:

From here, we turned off the main road onto a private two lane road, without shoulders.

It turns out that I haven't completely conquered my fear of twisting roads. Though to some extent I blame the variety of signs warning about the danger of driving off the road into the sand. Something I don't understand, given the wheel tracks that crisscrossed the road - no one else seemed to have a problem driving right off the road! But we did stop to take a few pictures:

This panorama shows the sun, which was nearly setting
as we arrived.

When we arrived at the check in desk, we were escorted outside onto a terrace to watch the setting sun. We were also given cool wash clothes, dates, and a yogurt and date drink:

The next morning, I took this picture out of the window in our room. I think it looks like a painting; it's almost unreal.

But speaking of art, I took this picture of the sand on our second night when we walked out to watch the sunset. One hallway in the resort was decorated with 3D art that looked very similar to this.