Oh back to that wrong turn thing, we did have a map with us but of course the roads are rarely marked and often the number/name in the map book is different than what is posted. Crazy really, but the whole concept of numbering and naming roads is very new here. Plus we didn't want to end up in Oman because we didn't have our passports.
The mountains seemed to go on forever but finally we reached the coast. We stopped to see the water. Unfortunately the waves were far too big to go snorkeling. So we drove further up the coast to see if the water was calmer there. No luck. But we did get to see lots of beaches. For some reason we didn't get any pictures of the beaches. We will have to remember to take some next time.
On the way back down the coast we looked for some lunch. Dubai is very liberal and has many American restaurants, however this part of the country is more conservative and has very few. The girls and Larry aren't into Arabic food. It's not my favorite either, but I would have eaten it. Anyway, we finally spy a KFC and called it our oasis in the dessert. We also stopped at an old fort. At first we weren't sure if it was something that we could go into because there weren't any non-muslim looking people inside the gates. We finally went in and it was fine. We just couldn't go into the old mosque.
Our desert oasis in the sand....These are views from the old fort. Just look at that oasis... beautiful ay? There are mountains and rocks every where and then BAM, out pops a section of trees in the middle.
Here is a picture of some native housing in the area.
Then it was time to head home. We took a quicker way home and we came across something called the Friday Market. It's a large market for fruits and vegetables, plants and carpets. We bought some apples, a large rug and some plants. It was fun haggling over the prices and leaving feeling that we had gotten some bargains.
Also on the way home we decided to stop at a children's museum. We figured it would be some small, not so nice place as it was in the middle of the desert and the admission was only 15Dhs per adult and kids were free (that's only about $5). It turned out to be amazing. There were 3 museums in one - a farm, natural history (which we didn't even get to before it closed) and a huge musuem of animals native to the UAE. We spent most of our time in the native animal building. There were at least 4 times that we thought we were at the end of the museum only to see it went on more. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside. There was a section for each animal type - bugs, snakes, birds, big outdoor animals, fish and so on. It was really great.
Here are a few pictures of the farm animals and some of us outside enjoying the low temperature (95 or so).
