It features extreme temperatures, vast dunes, rocky plateaus, and rare oases.
The Wind Woman was laughing and whistling over the wet sweet fields; freebooting crows held conferences in the tree tops; little pools of sunshine lay in the mossy hollows; the sea was a blaze of sapphire beyond the golden dunes; the maples in Lofty John's bush were talking about red buds.
And there is almost as fine a view of the harbor and the dunes from the Morgan place as from here.
The harbor was sparkling and dimpling like a girl; white gulls were soaring over the dunes; beyond the bar was a shining, wonderful sea.
The hills and fields were dry and brown and warm, ready to break into bud and blossom; the harbor was laughter-shaken again; the long harbor road was like a gleaming red ribbon; down on the dunes a crowd of boys, who were out smelt fishing, were burning the thick, dry sandhill grass of the preceding summer.
A rollicking wind was scudding across the harbor and the dunes, whipping the water into white-caps and washing the sandshore with long lines of silvery breakers.
" Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a load of shells for her garden, and a little bunch of sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the sand dunes.
Beyond her, it smote upon and incarnadined the shining, white, grassless faces of the sand dunes.
Far down, she saw its entrance between the bar of sand dunes on one side and a steep, high, grim, red sandstone cliff on the other.
To the enormous lava rocks succeeded soon those capricious sand dunes, among which the engineer had been so singularly recovered, and which seabirds frequented in thousands.
The scenic quality of Qinghai's widely varying landscape is superb and enticing, offering from the ranges of gleaming mountains with glacier-capped peaks over 6000 meters high to the gobi desert dunes of Qaidam, from lush ranchland to the sapphire-like lakes of vast area, all this has created a land of marvel, mystery and diversity.
The retreat in September 1982 was at the Pajaro Dunes near Monterey.
If you're more of an adrenaline junkie, head to the Namib desert for a spot of sandboarding on the dunes.
This was enough time for children to make snowmen and sled on the sand dunes, creating memories that may not be reenacted for many years to come.
Yet, since 1978, China has planted at least 66 billion of them across its arid northern territories, hoping to transform its sandy steppes and yellow dunes into a Great Green Wall.
Yet, since 1978, China has planted at least 66 billion of them across its arid northern territories, hoping to transform its sandy steppes and yellow dunes into a Great Green Wall.
Fabrizio Antonioli, the director of research at the Laboratory of Climate Modelling told National Geographic Italian: "The coast is flat and there are no dunes to act as a natural barrier.
In his images, a thin layer of snow rests on deep orange dunes and forms whirling patterns where the slopes are too steep for it to settle.
Their beaches were rarely empty and even at night there were often fires in the dunes and people in the water, enjoying a swim.
From its vertiginous viewing galleries visitors look down on the great commercial city spread below them and across to the seemingly boundless dunes of the Empty Quarter.
