Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds MKIII
Lens: Canon EF 16-35 mm. f/4.0L IS

It was really really great to have a completely relaxed day without any big adventures for a change. I loved the orportunity to wind down a bit, and also took some time to enjoy the view of the endless sand-dunes. Today the weather apparently would like to befriend us a little, maybe wanting to make a menace after the last few days with furious temper, no matter, we were gifted with some spectacular nice hot and sunny hours, from dawn to dusk. What a relief, we really have had enough adventures the last few days in the desert to last for a while.

Today would be the big day in the dunes. Steve´s 100-series was completely new-build just in time for this trip, and the truck had been put to some rough tests the last two weeks. Filling his auxiliary fuel-tank for the first time were a bad experience, the breather-lines did not do a proper job, and fuel leaked from underneath the Land Cruiser. Yesterday when he had got stuck close to the Sebkat Arida I pulled him out from the mud and in the proces the front-bumper got torn upwards a fair bit. So while the rest of us had some fun in the dunes Paul and Steve would work on re-aligning the bumper correctly.

Normally driving in dunes will be impossible without airing down the tires a lot. You will also need some momentum to get up to the top of the dune, approaching it from the upwind side with the smallest inclination. From time to time you will need more than one attempt to get the correct amount of speed and momentum to reach the crest with precisely the proper speed. Going to fast up the dune you will end up jumping the crest with too high a velocity; resulting in a much too fast descent on the steep down-wind side of the dune. If you´re in luck, all that will happen is that you will damage the front of you car very badly hitting the solid desert-base at the foot of the dune, - if you are really really unlucky you air-bags will go off. Neither being a want-able scenario.

But today dune-driving were as easy as doing the dishes, but so much more fun. As a side-effect caused by the rainfall the dunes had a fairly hard crust on top; so nearly no airing down were needed for the job at hand, we had no trouble applying the correct amount of throttle and no need to get the line approaching the dune-top spot-on. Childsplay. The big problem were that the crest was so firm that you would get stuck on top of it, normally the crest will quickly surrender and give in from the weight of the truck, but oh-no-no not today. Of cause I had to climb the highest dune in sight, now the going was so easy, and naturally I got solid stuck on top, - all four wheels spinning along in the air, - the magic of having three differential-lockers.

We spend all the afternoon in the most lovely manner, - driving over sand-dune after sand-dune on the dune-belt that stretches up along the North Pacific coastline.

Camp was made early today in between a nice collection of dunes, surrounding us and completely sheltering us from whatever wind that were present. The desert-base had a very big collection of petrified wood on display for us, and I also managed to find two pieces of petrified corral.
After setting up camp the tiring work on removing all the, now rock-solid, mud from yesterdays adventure would begin. We where all more or less preoccupied for several hours with this very boring task. So after that tedious job I were happy to climb a large sand dune and watch the sun-set from the summit, having a 360 degrees overview to nothing but dunes.