What a night - quite an experience. The wind is blowing strongly most of the night and only lets up just before we get out of bed. When we wake up, the inside of the tent is covered with a coating of sand. It is everywhere. On top of the bags, on the floor, all over our sleeping bags and on our heads and faces. It was a restless night and we were happy to have the sun rise and the wind die down.
After breakfast at 8:10 AM, we pack up the camp site and are off at 9:00 AM. We spend the day driving through the desert. We get stuck once and have to use the sand mats to get out (see 25 October, 2000 for further details on getting the truck out of the sand). At one point, we lower the air pressure in the tires, so that they balloon out and they will float better on top of the sand. But that means that we will need to drive slower. (That is Jacqui with Joseph in the picture.)
At 11:50 AM, we stop for lunch. We have a two hour stop for lunch in the middle of nowhere. We are trying not to drive at the hottest time of the day. We walk around and look at the sand formations and enjoy the endless vistas.
After driving off at 2:00 PM, we see some fire wood laying near our path. It is amazing that you can find wood in the desert, but there are a few trees here and there, and not so many people. And is this fire wood dry. We load up the truck with wood - front and back. It is placed in and on the basket at the back and tied on to the bull bar at front. We are looking forward to a nice fire this evening.
At 5:15 PM we stop for the day. Again, we stop near a dune, but this one is much smaller. This turns out to be a wonderful evening and night. We stroll on the dune and watch the sun as it sets. We have a great dinner around the camp fire. After dinner, we turn off all the lights and watch the night sky. There is no moon, so it is very clear. We can walk around in the light from the night sky. It is amazing. Tonight, we do not use the fly on our tent and we have a wonderful view of the night sky as we fall asleep. This is a total contrast from the previous night.