Once again, movie magic has shaped our perception of the Dune Sea. In reality, La Grande Dune consists of just a few isolated dunes. You can see the end of the dunes over my shoulder in this image.

The desert stormtrooper scenes were shot here as well (with new scenes for the Star Wars Special Edition shot in Yuma, Arizona).

My spouse, "Gus of Arabia," actually walked all the way to the ends of the dunes. In reality, C3PO could have just walked a few meters further, to Cafe des Dunes, and ordered a Coca-Cola.

Though it's not far from the end of the road to La Grand Dune, we decided to travel by camel-back, just so we'd have some ridiculous-looking photos like this to show our grandchildren.

This is on the way back to Cafe des Dunes. Once we were there, and safely dismounted from our ships of the desert, Gus got the bright idea of asking the Berber guy who'd rented us the camels if he'd ever seen anything resembling some Krayt dragon bones...