Special Mom’s blog

We came back home last night after an epic 8-day trip to the desert southwest.

It was during middle of Navaratri that I had booked a room at Joshua Tree National Park. In between a house full of dolls and guests, I was searching for a perfect place to stay and continue my bucket list journey of visiting all the 63 National parks with my special young man. A week later the federal government shutdown it’s business. That is when I decided maybe I should just do this as a beach trip. Round trip tickets were booked to Phoenix and guess what San Diego was our only option for a beach vacation.

Christmas vacations are hard. We live in the Northeast, and our connections are through Midwest airports. Rooms were booked for seven nights in Phoenix and San Diego areas, and nothing was planned. The eight-day journey was just an open book.

Got up early in the morning on Christmas day and found our flight was cancelled and we were pushed to another flight via Dallas. My younger son commented maybe we just needed to fly over Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple in Dallas and that is what we all smiled about.

On that particular Christmas day, we were in four time zones, Pittsburgh, EST, Dallas, CST, Phoenix, MST and finally checked into our hotel room in Joshua Tree National Park which was in PST.

It was almost a 1750-mile road trip with our special young man and me I should call myself the passenger princess who sat next to him in the back and made through three National Parks and one National Monument. Yes, we had our passports stamped and souvenirs purchased to bring back home. Yes, the almost 2000-mile road trip was on top to the air travel we did from Pittsburgh to Phoenix.

From planning the trip and making it back, the journey in itself was an experience to all of us. We smiled, took selfies and fought a lot. Missing directions, arguing over when to stop and filling up ourselves with gas station coffee. I think we really bonded with each other. Yes, an automatic digital detox happened.😀

Arizona is a beautiful place, and we will be going back again to visit the Grand Canyon National Park. But there are so many more others too than that one. We now have done 13 National Parks, and we did nine of them in 2025.

I am not a photographer but here are some pictures of the parks that we visited.

Our trip to San Diego did not feature any sun baths but a visit to National Monument.

A lot of discussion was made if we should make a trip to the Grand Canyon. We didn’t have rooms booked and the weather was wonderful. We dropped the idea since we want it to be an overnight experience and decided to hit Petrified Forest National Park in Northeast Arizona. I think this was a great decision we made as a family and we enjoyed everything the park could offer.

The last park was an easy choice. Saguaro National Park, Tucson. We enjoyed being there. No hiking or adventures. Just being with the nature. Deserts are beautiful.

We did drive a good chunk of desert of Arizona and California. We saw the Mexican border and had our face hit with sand in Yuma, Arizona. Didn’t know there were so many sand dunes in the United States.