Boston is an unusual campervan base, because the city itself is the least van-friendly part of the trip and nearly everything worth driving to is one to five hours away. The planning problem here is not what to see; it is getting the van out of town cleanly and booking campsites across three or four states whose reservation systems do not agree with each other.
Getting the van out of the city
Two constraints matter before you turn a key. The riverside parkways that look like the obvious way across town are not open to you: Storrow Drive and Soldiers Field Road in Boston and Memorial Drive in Cambridge are state-managed "cars only" roads with overpass clearances as low as nine feet. Striking one of those bridges is common enough locally that it has a name, "Storrowing," and the state runs an annual public-awareness campaign before college move-in weekend. Any raised-roof or pop-top van should treat the river roads as closed and stay on I-90, I-93, and Route 1.
The second constraint is parking. Article IV, Section 13 of the city's traffic rules bans overnight street parking on residential streets for vehicles over 12,000 pounds gross weight, residential blocks are resident-permit only, and most downtown parking is indoor garage decks with clearances a tall van will not make. Do the Freedom Trail and Fenway on foot and by subway, then pick the van up and leave.
Pickup itself is straightforward but not curbside: there is no RV counter inside Logan's terminals. Campervans in this market usually come from peer-to-peer hosts, so it helps to know how a peer-to-peer rental works before you book. Hosts either meet you near the airport or deliver for a fee, so confirm the handover point and time before you lock in a flight.
Where people actually point a van
Cape Cod, roughly 1.5 to 2 hours without traffic
Every vehicle that reaches the Cape by road crosses one of two 1930s bridges over the Cape Cod Canal, the Sagamore and the Bourne, which between them carry eight lanes. On summer Fridays the backup builds from around midday and peaks through the afternoon, and the usual local advice is to cross before mid-morning or after 8 p.m. Once you are across, Route 6 narrows to a single lane each way between Dennis and the Orleans rotary, which is where the second delay happens. Starting from campervan rentals on Cape Cod skips both bottlenecks on the way out.
The camping situation matters more than the traffic. Cape Cod National Seashore has no campgrounds. The only camping inside it is self-contained-vehicle camping on Race Point Beach in Provincetown, from July 1 through Labor Day, and the requirements are strict: a permit, four-wheel or all-wheel drive, a self-contained water or chemical toilet, and permanently installed grey and black tanks each holding at least three days' capacity. Spaces are first come, first served and capped at 100 vehicles a night. Authorizations run up to three nights at a time and are renewable to a 21-night maximum across the season.
For everyone else, Nickerson State Park in Brewster is the anchor: 418 sites in pine and oak woods, hot showers, a dump station, and no hookups anywhere in the park, which is fine for a van with a decent house battery and a problem for anything that needs shore power for air conditioning. On the mainland side of the canal, Scusset Beach in Sagamore is the closest full-service alternative, with water and 20/30/50-amp electric at most of its sites and a dump station on site.
The White Mountains, about 2.5 hours up I-93
I-93 runs from Boston straight into Franconia Notch, where the interstate itself narrows into the Franconia Notch Parkway. White Mountain National Forest campgrounds book through recreation.gov and none of them have electrical hookups, so plan on running self-contained. Dispersed and roadside camping is allowed in the forest under real rules: away from trailheads, developed sites, and water, with designated roadside sites on a handful of named forest roads. New Hampshire state parks like Franconia Notch and White Lake are on a separate system and open 11 months ahead. If the White Mountains are the whole trip, campervan rentals in New Hampshire save you the run up I-93 in both directions.
Acadia, about 4.5 to 5 hours
Roughly 280 miles up I-95 through Maine to Bar Harbor, or well over five hours if you take Route 1 through the midcoast, which is the better drive and the slower one. Blackwoods and Seawall are reserved on recreation.gov, and the release pattern is the thing to know: 90% of sites go live six months ahead at 10 a.m. on the first of each month, with the remaining 10% held back until 14 days out. Acadia is a long haul for a three-day trip and a good fit for a week. If your dates are short, campervan rentals near Acadia take two long drives out of the plan.
Timing the trip
Mid-May through June is quiet and cheap but coincides with black fly season across northern New England, which runs roughly from late May through June and lingers longer at elevation and near running water. July and August are when Cape reservations and bridge traffic are both at their worst. Late August through September is the sweet spot: Cape water peaks in late July and August and holds enough warmth to swim well into September, crowds thin sharply after Labor Day, and Massachusetts state campgrounds stay open into October. October is foliage season, which is beautiful and busy in equal measure. From November into spring most Massachusetts state campgrounds are closed, and a van trip becomes a private-campground or off-season proposition.