Squirrel !

Okay, if you have seen the movie "Up", then you are familiar with the funny dogs, and how distracted those characters get when it comes to squirrels.

Squirrel!

Monday, I took a bit of a road trip for work with Iain (he has the massive job of hands-on coordinating academics with our nine campuses).  I had not yet visited Ras Al Khaimah, which is at the northwest tip of the UAE, about 2.5 hours north of Abu Dhabi.  Referencing google maps again, we drove up E11 to E311.  You can take E11 all the way up, but for a variety of reasons E311 worked for us.

It is a bit of a wilderness on the way up to Ras al Khaimah, or RAK for short (pronounced "rock", if you are going for the shorter nickname). Development going on in the city area.  Lots of sand dunes along the way.  It could have been the lighting, but given that it was mid-day, I don't think that was a factor ... on the eastern side of the road the sand was a more traditional beige sand color.  On the western side of the road, the dunes were a much more vibrant orange. Quite beautiful. 

The fun of the wilderness for me was the number of camels we saw along the way to RAK.  Where I was cracking up, was how excited I got each time we saw camels.  The "squirrels" analogy is because we'd be driving along, talking about whatever, and we'd have these randoms interruptions to a thought or sentence, point, and say "camel!"  It started happening enough that it reminded me of the dogs in "Up" and cracked me up even more.

I need to see some camels up close and not from a car.  They are just fun.  Perhaps I can get myself to a camel race soon.

We didn't make to the coastal side of the city, which I hear is beautiful. And reportedly several lovely hotels, and just a great place to spend a weekend.  There are mountains nearby; they looked large from a distance, so I can only imagine how big they actually are.

Camel!

Camel!