WA-OR-CA-NV-AZ-UT-ID-WA

Welcome to the next two weeks of my life. We Le's don't mess around.

I'm leaving Monday morning around 8am for Lake Tahoe. My family has been on countless road trips through all parts of WA, OR, and northern CA, so we're breezing through those states and going straight for the gold. Our tentative schedule looks something like this:

6/27: Leave Bellevue
6/28-29: Lake Tahoe
6/29-30: Greater SF area/Napa Valley
7/1: Malibu
7/1-4: Santa Ana
7/4-5: Las Vegas, NV
7/5-7: Grand Canyon (!!!)
7/7-10: Utah, various (Lake Powell, Arches National Park, etc)
7/11: Home

The reason why I say tentative is because my family fails at making plans.  In my father's words: "it's not our style." The advent of the internet (and my father's subsequent recognition of the internet as a necessary evil, decades after its invention) has helped planning somewhat, but we remain people of our roots. The last Epic Road Trip my family took was in 2002, when we took three weeks to scour every major city from here to Phoenix, AZ. My father did not print out directions or make reservations. Nope. We had a US map, more detailed state maps, and my 12-year-old self as front-seat navigator (I thank my dad for my great sense of direction despite being an Asian female). Where did we sleep at night? We camped where we could. And if we had to stay somewhere more people-friendly, we just drove along the highway until we found suitable accomodations. Now that's adventure.

This time around, though, we have a plan. Sort of. Knowing us, two-days into the trip we're going to see a sign pointing left to some cave, and my father won't be able to say no. We'll swerve off the highway, follow some dusty, overgrown road, and take a locally-guided tour down into a damp, dark, cave that will turn out to be incredible and the highlight of our trip.

Case in point: Lake Shasta Caverns on Lake Shasta, CA. Never heard of it? We hadn't either until we drove past it on our way back from Yosemite National Park in 2008. These caves remain the highlight of that trip.

Hopefully we'll make it to the Grand Canyon. And, after that, Utah. Oh, Utah. This has been on my dad's "To-visit" list for years and years now, but he's never wanted to do it without the kids, and I've been an awful daughter in that since leaving for college I've never been home long enough to go on a proper road trip with my daddy. Well, we're changing that this summer. We're going to spend four days in Utah, which, for a Le family roadtrip, is pretty much a lifetime.

You may be wondering, then, why we're spending 4 whole days in Santa Ana. Good question. The real reason why we're going on this road trip is for a Vietnamese Christian Conference in Santa Ana. This month (June) marks 100 years of Evangelical Christianity in Vietnam which is a Big Deal for my family and for the Vietnamese Christian community worldwide. Thousands of Vietnamese Christians from all denominations will gather in Santa Ana from July 1-4 in celebration. Sound terrifying? It will be. Exciting? Even more so!

So there you have it. My itinerary for June 27th-July 11th. Blog updates will likely be rare, but I promise a good one upon my return.