August 21-26, 2019. My parents wanted to send me off for my grad studies and joined the trip to Paris. Only that they also took that as an opportunity, more like a nice excuse, to fly through the U.S. and spend time together us three, and to also see some relatives and some of their friends. People of their generation really have an amazing penchant for America that a trip to Europe could become an excuse to have a side trip over there, even if it meant passing by the other way around the world. Of course, I did not mind. I would be gone for a year and I loved to have spent time with them before saying goodbye.
We landed at the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday (August 21) after a long-haul flight from Manila (with a layover at the Taipei airport in Taiwan). We were picked up by Tita Gigi from the airport in L.A. and we drove straight off to St. George, Utah where we spent the night before making a day trip the next day (August 22) to Lower Antelope Canyon in Arizona.
My parents are not big fans of walking and the heat of the desert but they enjoyed the amazing views below the ‘canyon’ with amazing ‘out-of-this-world’ red rock formations. It was desktop-screensaver beautiful! We made a brief stop-over at the Glen Canyon dam traversing the Colorado River.
We drove that same afternoon all the way back to Las Vegas, passing through Zion National Park, taking a few photo stops along the way. In Las Vegas, we stayed with the family of one of my mom’s hometown childhood friends who have since immigrated and settled in Nevada.