Cost for the Palm Springs family trip

My dad brought up the idea of coming to my house & having a trip with the four of us (myself, my sister & parents) for a concert. The concert tickets ended up being $800/per person (!!!!), so we skipped that idea. We proposed doing something else as the four of us, which I don't think we've done since everyone got married. I know M could absolutely come if he wanted to, but he has plenty of his own commitments on lately. 

In the end, we spent Thursday-Sunday in Palm Springs, which none of us had ever been to. My mom came down with a 24 hour bug and wasn't feeling well on Friday, but the rest of the trip was fantastic. It's hard to watch your parents age, at that phase where there are noticeable changes in their health between time you see them. Which reinforces & underscores my decision to get together. It was well worth the time, money & effort. We had a great time. For me, aside from the time together, taking the aerial tram to the state park was fantastic, as was Joshua Tree. We also got pretty lucky with the weather (it rained a bit on Saturday & Sunday, but overall it was cool & lovely) & enjoyed some sunshine. 

Flights - I'm counting the parts I paid for only, but you can see full costs below. $632.40

• The flights were an absolute adventure to book, & I'm the designated travel planner of the group. My dad wanted to use his Alaska miles to book the flights for my parents & help my sister. Unfortunately, he had forgotten he'd used the majority of his miles as a gift for my sister's trip to Iceland (family wedding). So, he & my mom both had much smaller amounts of miles in their account, neither with enough to cover a single trip. The outbound flights were much fewer points, however, so I got creative. I booked two one ways out of my mom's account on miles, and one one way out of my dad's account for my sister. I then went back into my dad's account & paid cash for the three one way return flights, as his account gives slightly better seats, that everyone could book for free. 
• In total, the three return flights cost a total of $1150.38. My sister paid $300, I paid $300 (gift for my dad for his birthday & just helping out in general). My parents paid the remaining amount.
• For my flights, I also got creative. I had a $70 Southwest credit with my Chase card, so I booked a one way using that. Out of pocket was $67.40
• On the return flight for me, the best time that matched up with my family's flight to Portland was a United flight into SFO. I booked that out of pocket for $267.70

Transit - $72.20

• My sister covered the car rental, and my dad filled up the car with gas before we dropped it back off at the airport.
• Sam was able to drop me off at the airport on Thursday, saving me the cost of a ride share
• Unfortunately for Sunday, I didn't have a ride home, & was coming from SFO, which is always more expensive - $72.20
• Valet parking at the hotel was covered with my free Hyatt points stay. 

Food - $363.06

• We all paid for various meals, and I covered dinner the first night & the remainder of brunch not covered by my Hyatt Globalist free breakfast for two. - $363.06

Lodging - $0

• In a very strategically timed move (I spent a lot of time lining the dates up to make this work), I was able to book two separate rooms on points for three nights each, and used two Suite Upgrade Awards, all from the Hyatt. These rooms were ~$800/night each, so a huge value to book using points. 

Activities - $139.80

• I used my National Park Pass to get us all into Joshua Tree National Park for free. We brought sandwiches, water & snacks, which worked out well & kept costs to just the food (above). 
• I paid for tickets for the Palm Springs Aerial Tram, which was really cool & brought you up to high above the Coachella Valley. Once you were on top at Mt Jacinto State Park, you could hike around & explore the really lovely park. It was gorgeous. The four tickets were $139.80. 

Total spent for the trip = $1207.46