The Desert - sand and sun - It's like the beach right?

I really don't know how to describe it accurately in words, but to say it's like the beach would be saying that lite beer is like beer...it's NOT! But just to give you an idea of how much fun the weather can be here, I figured I'd give you some photos of what the day was like this past Thursday - and pictures of what it should look like on a clear day (for comparison's sake, of course). I definately encourage you to click on each photo to open the full resolution shot instead of trying to rely solely on the image displayed on the main blog page.

I have done my best to keep with the angles and distances that I shot the photos from for each of the days. The below photo is of our barracks area. Notice not only the obvious resemblance to a martian landscape. But try and take in the sand-bag area that was only about 20 meters in front of me, and the vehicle in the foreground that was only about 50 meters away - if that.



And this is what the same view should look like on a normal day. Much better right?



Here's a shot down the street towards the intersection near our living area. Notice if you can the vehicle on the cross street only about 40 meters away. And see if you can find the STOP sign.



And again - the view on a normal day.



Here is what the sun looked like at around high noon this past Thursday. I have no idea how far this dust cloud rose into the atmosphere, but it was really high. And the craziest part was that there was virtually NO wind. Now this is in an area where there is nothing to stop the wind and where flights are grounded more times than not because of the whipping wind. All I can figure is that all this dirt got blown up somewhere far away from us and just rolled in overnight. It was probably the finest particle dust I have just about ever seen. And of course by the end of the day it had pretty much covered anything that was sitting still.

Yep - that's what kinds of fun you can have out here at this "beach" like country here. I have some land I'm willing to sell you as well if you're interested. The good part is that days like this past Thursday are fairly rare and usually any dust that's blown up by the wind goes away as soon as the wind does. But this was an exceptionally interesting phenomenon indeed.

Hope all is going well and that your week has started off on the right foot. Things are rolling along here, and hopefully I can keep getting you some regular updates to make up for my lack of blogging over the past couple months.

For now - back to work.