Still annoyed about my solar, my engineering friend Alif messaged me with a potential reason for the alternator not powering the solar battery. It makes perfect sense and helps, but does not calm my annoyance at the fitting when I made it very clear how I wanted my set up.
I think we can survive the trip but we will need to be strategic and clever with our battery usage and save our energy as they say for my discussion with the solar fitters.
It is a good drive north west to Hail and we discuss alternative options, but set out for the original site on our route plan. The road is a long and straight one with new scenery of hills, dramatic scenery compared to the city and towns, a train line that seems to run parallel with us for hundreds of kilometers and scary of all, grey low clouds. We watch the temperature drop too. We also see more regular security stops mostly checking lorries and we are waved through with a smile and amusement. The last stage of the drive was the longest for sure and we watch the fuel gauge drop to its lowest point. Made us laugh as twice we think there is a petrol station ahead. The first it turned out to be a train station and the second every odder, it is an abandoned station, full of camels.
We arrive at the race track and drive in parallel with the track for some distance. We see the track and the road alongside it with a good stretch of sand between that and the highway.
It is fairly quiet with only the odd speeding car or truck on the highway. We sit and enjoy the sun set and notice the air chill. By the time we start to cook something, the sky has darkened black and the temperature drop to an unfamiliar 12 degrees centigrade and the wind with has been our enemy this trip so far, making if feel as if it was minus ten degrees.
There are no lights on along the camel race track so makes it lovely and dark. The stars are all out and it is an epic sight. We spend a cold 20 minutes photographing the sky before I could not feel my phone with my fingers.
Becky prepares for bed by wrapping herself with an odd collection of wool garments that Captain Scott of the Antarctic would be proud of. Strangle we head to bed again by 9pm and are asleep by 9:01pm, this overlanding is hard work.
