Sounds like your having a great time.
Your kind of right, sure they look cool. Should see the amount of 4WD's that have them up this neck of the woods. Have one on my Nissan D40 Navara/Frontier. There is a pose factor but the main reason is we can get lot of rain up here in short amount of time in the tropics so more of an insurance thing, just in case, rather than go out looking for deep creek or river crossings. As for the reduction in dust, that is a moot point. A well designed late model 4WD with intake between the inner and outer guard will ingest little if any more dust than the snorkel. In fact my snorkel sucks in a lot more bugs than the standard intake. Sometimes, depending on the vehicle it can be advantageous to have that cooler air being sucked in outside the engine bay, particularly in a hot climate.