Several of my local guns stores have both of these in stock.  What would be the best to take for all out shooting in the desert?  Is the .223 just made for plinking and cheap ammo? Like how they have 1911 conversions from .45ACP to .22?

Just make sure that.......

1. The front sight is straight and not crooked or "canted".

2. The gas block is straight and aligned with the receiver.

3. The scope rail works.

4. There aren't 50,000 scratches all over the rifle.

Otherwise, you'll end up spending $250+ to fix the damn thing to make it look nice, because you're bound to fall in love with the damned thing!

I like my SAR-2, but in retrospect, I should have bought a Krebs Custom or AK-USA rifle because I ended up putting a lot of money into the rifle to turn it into a "nice" high dollar AK. If you can do gunsmithing though, these guys on this board can help you through the steps of refinishing, adding a muzzle brake, or even installing a better trigger. The Romanian SAR rifles make for good project guns, or rifles great for plinking and just screwing around.