First step, give apartment notice. I started back calculating dates: I had to be at SFO for a flight to Hong Kong/China with my parents on Wednesday, October 28th. I wanted to have a minimum of 1 week of rest between getting back to CA and my flight to Asia.....so we're conservatively at 10/19. I wanted to have as close to 6 weeks (just a random number picked out) as possible to travel cross country so I wouldn't have to rush...and now we are looking at 9/7. So I gave my apartment notice for 9/15; thinking that I moved in on the 19th and they would not let me out of my lease early, but maybe if I just asked for a few extra days, they might go for it.

Step two, get a flight for Weezie back home and stay with her as long as possible there so she could get acclimated before I left her to stay with my parents. I wanted to push her flight off as long as possible so that I could get as much time with her back home (and keep here with me as long as possible in DE) while maximize the number of working days I had left....more work = more $$$ cha ching ching! :) , time off is taboo for me even if it was pre-planned prior to starting and written in as a condition of my employment. So her flight was scheduled for 8/26-8/31; almost a week with her back home!

Step three, schedule a storage/moving POD to store my stuff and then move/deliver to where ever I decided to make my final destination. It is so unlike me, but I am moving without knowing where I am going to end up next. I have it narrowed down to a handful of states that I'll be either checking out on my road trip back West or after the Asia trip. I was a bit nervous since in previous moves, September served to be peak with back to school, but I lucked out and scheduled my preferred days, minus Labor day. So the POD is scheduled to be dropped off on the Friday after I return from dropping off Weeze, September 4th. I was hoping that I could schedule pick up for the following Monday and be on my way later that week. Unfortunately Monday. September, 7th is Labor day and a Holiday that the POD people don't work. Boo! So they are scheduled to pick up the POD on Tuesday instead. Leaving me with only having to schedule the carpet cleaning and dropping off keys prior to my departure!

And now....drum roll..........we can start the massive road trip prep project!!

Path: There seems to be 3 main routes cross country. For me the preferred route is the Southern route because of the culture. Unfortunately, the timing happens to be that I will be traveling during probably some of the hottest and humid months in the year....so the Northern route it is! I initially started mapping out my path with the aid of the book, Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways (top pic). I combined their suggested Portland to Provincetown path (bottom pic) with my list of key sites: Acadia National Park, Niagara Falls (which I later removed from the list since I had already visited as a condition of myself prior to re-employment), Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone NP, Grand Teton, Jackson Hole, WY, Rocky Mountain NP, Taos Pueblo, Arches NP, Zion NP, Antelope Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Canyonlands NP. Only later did my brother remind me of an article I had stumbled upon previously about the best mathematically calculated path to stop at major U.S. landmarks. Using this, I decided to update my path, while probably making it longer. But I can't very well pass up any major sites on my "once in a lifetime" road trip! This path is still being fine tuned as time alots!