The journey!!!

I never thought that I would be ever able to live a life of a traveler!!! Most of the normal people live a normal life. By which I mean, get married, get a steady job and buy a house. Every time my mother calls me, she asks " Save some money, you guys need to buy a house and get settled". It is not like I despise the people who buy house, I just don't understand the reason behind it. Of course, my mother's answer is "Buying a house means, you have a permanent address. You are not going anywhere from there". To me, this is where the biggest problem lies. Only permanent address we have as a human is the grave!!!! We cannot live forever in the house we buy, we cannot even say that we own the house. When Allah (SWT) gave me the opportunity to go for a cross country road trip, I was more than happy for it. For the first time ever I would be able to live the life of a true traveler even if it was only for 13 days. People here say, people develop a special bond with the person the share this road trip with. I completely agree with that. To me, this road trip felt like we lived our whole life in these 13 days. We lived the moments when we were enormously happy, the moments when we were scared to death. We changed places continuously, we woke up in a different place every morning. Only thing that did not change was us!!! I learned to be happy with small things, was really grateful to Allah (SWT) when we got a place to spend the night... We did not have fancy dishes for any meal but whatever we had it was more tastier than those dishes. Sometimes we did not have fancy beds and fancy rooms to sleep. But I have to say, camping under the wide open sky was much fulfilling than the expensive hotel beds. Hubby agrees with me on that!!! I met some wonderful people along the way. Especially the lady who I met at resting area in Missouri. Then met her again the next morning at another resting area in Kansas who made my day by hugging me during the Fajr time!!!! Also the lady who waved at me in the camping ground, the elderly couple we met in Montana. I was envious of them and was wondering if would be able to camp out in the jungle for 10 days like them at their age. Those people were the complete naturalist. I love nature so at that moment, I really wanted to be in their shoes. Now let me tell you guys the moment of horror!!! Actually it was the whole night of horror. We were in Colorado heading toward Grand Canyon, Arizona. Without knowing, we picked a local road to go there. The road wasn't bad and it had this great view!!! We were kind of driving at the edge of the mountain. The horror started when it started snowing at the top of the mountain and everything was so icy!!! None of us thought about snow in the summer. Anywhere I looked, dark. We could not see a single human being anywhere. On top of that, no cellphone signal. That night, we did not sleep!!! It felt like an endless road inside the forest. We were continuously looking at time and waiting for the sun to rise so that we can see where were we going or feel confident about the place. I know it does not sound much of  a horror when you read about it. You have to be at that moment to experience the horror of it when the car started moving downhill at 30 MPH without pressing any gas and continuously worry about falling off the cliff without anybody knowing about it or when your body wants to close your eyes and you are forcing yourself to stay up by reciting all the surah and smacking yourself every now and then. I have to admit that this was the first time we recited any surah together as we were both scared and we both needed to stay up to keep each other up. May be it was because of the surahs and duas we made it to the morning after sleeping for an hour at an isolated gas station. At the Fajr time, we were so happy that the horror was over and promised ourselves never to take any road other than interstate highways. Now that I look back, I am glad we had that experience. It is not because I am creepy, it is because we managed to stand by each other at that moment!!! The next morning driving toward Arizona, the view changed completely from green mountains to red mountains. Driving by, I felt like I was in a different planet. Everything was red and other worldly. I also managed to witness the hardship of life over there. There were no big trees around and water was scarce!!! Life looked really hard for those Red Indian people. After Grand Canyon, we started driving toward Sequoia National Park, California. California looked pretty barren to me except those parks. They had hundreds of small mountains along the way but none of them were green. The sun was intense enough to burn the skin. As soon as we get into the park, the whole atmosphere changed. It was raining and everything was green!!! Who would say that everything looked dead 10 minutes ago!!! Those giant Sequoias were incredibly big. It made me look like a tiny bug around it's base. Subhanallah!!!! We camped in Sequoia that night and had the great lake view for the morning breakfast. The next destination was Yosemite national park. The beauty of that park was simply breath taking. On the way coming back home, we also visited Grand Teton national park and Yellowstone national park. Even though the temperature was below 60 F, we still had fun camping in the jungle without no electricity or hot water. This was one of a kind experience. We spent one night in a motel in Montana. I have to say, the people were really nice. May be the nicest people I have ever met!!! In another 3 days we were back home!!!! Back to our same old life. I must say that this 13 days nomadic life style has taught me a lot, has made me look at things with a completely different perspective. But I am not going to talk about that in here!!! It is a topic for my new article.....