02.21.07

Grand Canyon Adventure- Part 1

Posted in Personal at 11:28 am by Abbas

The Canyon trip was indeed an adventure. I am inshaAllah going to blog on it. I don’t have time to blog all of it, so I’ll divide it into parts I guess. For the sake of confidentiality I will use fake names (Sam, Albert, Kemp, Abbas, Bernstein). This is not a novel or a story book, so please don’t lecture me on grammar and proper structure (I don’t care- I am just typing it up). Here is part 1.

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We left San Diego right after Fajr time on friday (6am) heading towards Pheonex, so we can meet up with some of our Arizona (SMSA) friends and attend the Al Mahdi program (Dr. Liyakat Takim lectured). Kemp did most of the driving, and I did most of the sleeping - I was very tired, because I barely had any sleep the night before. We talked about all sorts of things (fireworks - they are illegal in Cali, gun-laws in Arizona, Jinns, bears, etc). I didn’t really know much about Pheonex; the only thing I knew was the Suns.

We finally made it and we wanted to look for a cheap motels.

Kemp: I know a ghetto motel.. let me take this exit.
Me: Where is it..
Kemp: Right here.

We look for really cheap motels. We see three of them that are around 40. Then we see one that is 35.00 per night.

Albert: Man, we are going to get STDs in these motels. I am not staying in them.

The pool fence was rusted, the curtains were ripped and the cars parked outside were totalled, so we decided it was not worth it. We started to get hungry, so we went to some halal Arab restaurant to eat. We filled our stomachs and Kemp found a nice little hotel through a friend (since he knew the area). We showered, slept and headed to the masjid. It was in the middle of a residential area but it was pretty roomy and there were a good amount of people from different ethnicities (arab, irani, indopak).

We met up with some friends from Tuscon and Pheonex, some of whom I have never met face to face, but have a relationship through blogging, internet, or business.

We pick up Bernstein and we head out the next morning. Instead of leaving at 6am, we leave at 10, 10:30am (that was a big mistake.. you’ll see why soon). We stop at Walmart and we get 10 or so cans of beans, spinach, and tuna. We get gloves, 0 degree sleeping bags. I wanted the snake bite kit.

Sam: Your a Sayyid.. I thought you couldn’t get killed by snake bite. You can use your sayyid powers!

Me: Just in case…

Anyway, we get our stuff and we hit the road and we get there in a few hours. We stop at some hickish restaurant, while they were having an NRA meeting. We get into the Grand Canyon and we change into our clothes and we prepare ourselves down the hike. We chose the ~24 miles (total - up and down) trail. We were all excited and ready to go.

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