That’s what I was whispering to myself as we were driving out into the middle of nowhere on our way to Wahiba Sands. We went from highway to winding two lane roads to a single lane blacktop to sand. And then we kept driving. For another 45 minutes. I swear it was well over an hour, but Josh promises me it just felt that way.
It was bad enough on the winding roads through the mountains when the impatient drivers would pass on blind corners with no regard for anyone coming the other way. One dude was the best “chicken” player I’ve ever seen – he pulled straight into oncoming traffic to pass a slow moving bus and didn’t blink as the oncoming car swerved onto the shoulder to avoid hitting him head on. The crazy part was that the oncoming driver didn’t seem phased by it either.
Whatever. I’ve seen bad drivers before. But driving out into the middle of endless sand just about put me over the edge. I should have known when we pulled into a gas station at the end of the blacktop and had to let air out of our tires so we didn’t get stuck in the sand that it was not going to be as easy as pulling up to the local motel 6. I knew we were going camping in the desert, but I pictured it kind of like the Palm Springs/29 Palms desert – out by the windmills. Drive off the main road a few hundred yards, bumping a little bit over the sand/gravel and there you go. Not so much.
This was slipping/sliding/Laurence of Arabic sand dunes. Big ones. And inside my head, a small voice kept telling me, “You’re crazy. Do you know how far away you are from any type of emergency services? What if your car breaks down or you roll off one of these massive hills of sand?!” Since we had driven through at least two hours of nothing even before venturing out into the sand, I knew it was a really long way to any sort of civilization. And driving over the sand felt like hydroplaning on the freeway – 45 minutes of feeling like your tires didn’t have secure contact with the road and you could go sliding out of control at any minute.
Of course I was the only one having these logical thoughts – the rest of the family was having fun riding the sand waves. Meanwhile I was wondering if I had packed my special yellow pills . . .
a whole lot of nothing but sand . . .
You know you’ve gone too far when you see camels roaming free . . .
Logically I knew we were fine, but the safety girl inside me was having a fit. The drive back out of the desert was much easier. Partly because I realized that the sliding feeling was normal and didn’t mean that Josh had lost control of the car, but mostly because safety girl was happy we were finally headed in the right direction.