Tag: camping

Jebal Akdar trip

Jebal Akdar is a mountain that’s about 2 hours away from Muscat — the name translated means “Green Mountain.” At the base of the mountain there’s a police checkpoint because the drive is so steep that only 4 wheel drive vehicles are allowed. This did not make me a happy camper (literally!), but I just grabbed onto the armrest and tried to enjoy the view.

This doesn’t come close to showing how steep it was in some places. The road was beautiful and new, but it was so steep in parts that the car had a hard time finding a happy gear to be in and kept shifting back and forth. This is where Josh was wishing he had a stick shift.

Almost to the top . . . we passed several areas of construction as they are building guard walls along the cliffs and runaway vehicle ramps for the cars whose brakes go out as they are going downhill. I saw four different ones in various stages of progress, but none were completed yet. It didn’t make me too excited about the return trip . . .

69 degrees . . . woo! We haven’t seen 60s since leaving Monterey. We knew it would be cooler up on the mountain, but we were still surprised to feel the temperature change. It felt like 29 Palms in the fall — dry air, warm in the sun, cool in the shade.

All ready for camping — Calvin doesn’t have a headache, he’s just reading. He was absorbed in a new book and we had to yell at him to look up and see . . .


the donkeys. At the top of the mountain there were donkeys roaming everywhere. I thought we’d see goats, but I hadn’t expected to see wild packs of donkeys.

Eventually we pulled off the main road and started to drive even further into the middle of nowhere. On the way we passed other campers (Carter was impressed that the abaya wearing lady was helping to set up a tent). Legally you can camp anywhere in Oman. You can even pull off to the side of a highway and throw up a tent. We were heading somewhere a little further off the beaten path. We had GPS coordinates and were following friends who had camped in this particular spot before.

Once again, this was way steeper in real life than it looks in the photograph. There was one hill that Carter and I were very close to getting out and walking up instead of riding in the car.

After a lot of bumping around in the car we made it to our campsite by early afternoon. It had cooled to about 60 degrees at that elevation and Caleb was happy he had his blanket.


The boys set off looking for lizards, firewood, and other treasures.

Our camp — no one else around for as far as we could see


After the sun passed its peak, it began to cool off quickly. We pulled out sweatshirts and jackets, bundled up, and went for a hike.

  

   
The view from the top.  
I was really glad I brought my Uggs. More on that later. 

         

After coming back down the mountain it was time to add some layers. Camille ended up with 2 pairs of leggings, two shirts and a sweatshirt and a pair of my fuzzy socks on her legs when it was time for bed. Since it was already in the low 50s before dark we knew it was going to be a chilly night.

Josh cooked hamburgers on his propane grill and heated water so we could have coffee and we sat around the fire to eat. After dinner we had smores with marshmallows from the US! The ones here taste different because they don’t have gelatin in them — gelatin is usually made from pork bones. Then Josh broke out the guitar and played for us until it was time for bed.  

waking up with the donkeys

It was a cold night. I would have been OK except the baby was having a bad night. She hasn’t had a bad one in months, but of course the one night we’re camping she’s up every 30 minutes, fussing and thrashing around. Which would have been manageable, except every time I had to sit up and pat her I had to unzip my sleeping bag and it would take a while to warm back up again. I tried to have her sleep with me, but there wasn’t room in the sleeping bag for the two of us so half my body was out in the freezing cold. I finally wrapped her in a blanket and sat up and rocked her to sleep and then tried to sleep sitting up. It felt a lot like all those nights we spent when she was a newborn and had reflux. Except back then I had Law and Order to keep me company and my teeth weren’t chattering. At 6am the kids started waking up so I handed the baby off to Josh and tried to get a little more beauty sleep. 
But it clearly didn’t work. I took this picture when I woke up because I wanted to see how bad my “mango eyes” were and I didn’t have a mirror. They’re pretty puffy, but it’s hard to say how much of that is allergic reaction and how much is to be blamed on lack of sleep. 

This charming guy was strolling around and through our camp all night, braying his little heart out. I don’t know if he was lost or alerting his friends that he had struck gold in the scavenging department, but his call was LOUD and FREQUENT.

The unrestful night certainly didn’t seem to bother her any.

Getting warm by the campfire.

Carter trying to wrap his massar.

Finally thawing out in front of the fire with my Via and a warm baby in my lap.

Calvin and the other boys were roasting anything they could put on a stick — hot dog buns, bananas, oranges, pistachios . . . Calvin is trying to convince me to taste his burnt up apple because he says it tastes like apple sauce.  

Caleb took it upon himself to keep the fire going. Every time he saw it getting low, he’d find another big stick to lay across the top.

Then we packed up and it was time to hit the road — this is where we really needed the 4 wheel drive. 

People live and farm up here on top of the mountain.

I didn’t know donkeys were scavengers, but these guys were chowing down on the trash that was spilling out of a dumpster.

A last look across the valley to the mountains we camped on before we headed down the steep slope. We made it home without incident and didn’t need the runaway vehicle ramps after all. Once again, something that was scary in my head turned out to be uneventful in real life.

It was a great camping trip and all the boys are already asking to go back. We’ll do it again, but I’m packing some extra blankets next time!