dhows, mangroves, and sand dunes, oh my!

on day one of our holiday in qatar, we were off on our first of many adventures.  valerie and her friends, shane and erin, had rented a car so that we could head out of the city.  so the five of us, valerie, shelly, erin, shane, and myself, along with two dogs and all of our camping gear were off and away. 
stop one:  dhow port.  lots of boats and lots of rain!  yes, it was raining in qatar in the one day that we decided to go camping in the desert.  but we keep going...

that brings us to stop number two, which was some mangroves.  i don't seem to have any pictures but we did have a nice picnic lunch and the dogs had a wonderful run! 

then we were off to the singing sand dunes.  with only a minor back injury after going over a speed bump super fast, we arrived at the sand dunes to discover that the wind wouldn't allow for much camping.  we did have some fun playing in the sand though before heading back to the city: