Inland Sea

We had a fantastic weekend!

Thursday night I went to the girl's night out and it was pretty fun.  Unfortunately, we went to a hotel lounge that was playing REALLY LOUD music.  I could only talk to the people on either side of me and even then it was yelling to hear each other.  The group of ladies were mostly British and I was really surprised that almost all of them were smokers.  I wonder if more people smoke there than in the USA?

We got up Friday morning and packed up our beach stuff and loaded the kids into the SUV that we are renting.  We followed 4 other families on an hour trek out of town and saw petroleum processing plants in the middle of the desert.  We then stopped to let half the air pressure out of the tires and turned off the road and straight into the sand dunes!  Bobby was driving through the hilly parts but during the long straightaways we let the kids have turns driving.  Even Avery got a turn at the wheel.

Chase can barely see over the steering wheel!

Natalie drove like a pro!  

Is 3 too young to learn to drive?

After about an hour of driving through the dunes (thank goodness we were following people who knew where they were going!), we stopped at the top of a super big dune (it looked like a 60 deg angle going down).  A couple of the kids there took off their shoes and ran down.  The sand was really hot so Chase took off down with his slides on.  After about 10 feet, his slides came off and he kept running.  I went down to get the shoes and found one but the other got buried in the dune.  The sand was so soft that it went in there like quicksand.  My feet were on fire because I was in one spot trying to dig up the shoe so I had to leave it and run the rest of the way down the hill.  It was SO HOT that I had to hold my feet by the AC in the car the rest of the way because they felt like I had walked over hot coals!  Chase was diappointed that his shoe was lost  but the sand by the water wasn't hot so it all worked out okay.  After us crazies ran down the hill, the cars all drove down it!  It looked like they would tip over at any moment!

View from the top of the dune

Two kids at the bottom of the dune

First car makes it down

Chase at the top (shoes intact)

Chase at the bottom - you can see one of the slides in the bottom right of the photo
This is the one I was able to retrieve

View from the bottom of the dune

After a few more dunes we arrived at the Inland Sea.  It is on the coast and Saudi Arabia is on the other side of the water.

We spent the day playing in the water and grilling out and then made it back out of the desert just before dark.  I can't imagine trying to find the way out in the dark!  It was an amazing experience and I hope we can bring any of you who come to visit!

Chase and his buddy from the compound George

Cheetos in Qatar!

Chase and George 

Ken (George's dad)

Natalie with her friend Annie

Avery loving the Inland Sea

Our spot at the beach.  We parked the cars all around to prevent other cars from flying over the dunes and hitting the kids

Dunes

It is an amazing site to see

Time to head home

Exhaustion sets in on the way home

Beautiful Desert Sunset