Lucy came back from India bearing gifts, including this shirt that her daughter picked out for me. I love it, even if I’m not exactly sure what it means.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The unrestful night certainly didn’t seem to bother her any.
Getting warm by the campfire.
Finally thawing out in front of the fire with my Via and a warm baby in my lap.
People live and farm up here on top of the mountain.
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!
A friend posted this much better video of the sandstorm we had the other day. I don’t know who filmed it, but he (based on the voices in the background) did a great job capturing it as it rolled into town. It also shows how it was a normal day and then at the end when the storm reaches the location where they are filming, everything goes dark, just like it did at our house.
We’re back from camping. It was fun, but cold. Yes, actually cold. We went up, up, up the mountain and while it was 90 at home, it was 60 up there — in the daytime. At night it got down into the 40s (possibly lower, I wasn’t going to go outside of the tent to check) so we were huddled in our sleeping bags trying to stay warm. I was happy I brought my Uggs.
Camping photos and video coming soon!
The last few days the sky has gotten really dark, thunder has been rolling, and the humidity has been so thick that we’re positive it’s going to rain. It doesn’t. But this afternoon the boys were out playing handball in the front yard after school and suddenly Carter busts in the front door yelling, “Mom! You gotta see this!”
I go out front to see the sky has turned completely dark — the sky is so black that our security lights have been tricked into thinking it’s nighttime, but the darkness is from the dirt falling from the sky. The kids are running around screaming, “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”
I grabbed my camera and shot this really quickly. The camera lens lightened up the sky quite a bit, but you can still see how much dirt is in the air when I focus on the security light. It really was raining dirt. It was crazy and gritty.
About 10 minutes later the sky started lightening up again because it started raining and the water washed all the dirt out of the air. It didn’t rain much and it didn’t last long, but to feel actual water fall from the sky was a novelty. We went back outside and stood under the sparse drops like we do every time it rains in the desert.
We’re planning to go camping tomorrow unless it’s raining up on the mountain. Normally that wouldn’t be likely, but while we’ve been teased with rain here, it’s been pouring up there so we’ll have to see what the weather is like in the morning.
