California is four van trips that barely share a season, so a short rental picks one region and books the night there before it books the van. Yosemite and the Sierra take the summer, and the desert around Joshua Tree takes October through May, when the high country is shut and the coast is gray. Both flagships are dry camping start to finish: no Yosemite campsite has a hookup, and neither does one in Joshua Tree.
Between those two seasons you drive the coast and the wine country. The Big Sur stretch of Highway 1 is closed for wildfire as of August 2026, so US-101 is the inland route and Caltrans QuickMap is worth a look the morning you leave. Out of the Bay, the weekend is Point Reyes.
The Sierra and Yosemite
Yosemite is the region people rent a California van for, over four million recreation visits a year, with the crush landing on the Valley floor from April into September. The Valley floor is the flagship night, so hold a Recreation.gov reservation before you pick a date: the Pines campgrounds release at 7 a.m. Pacific and sell out in minutes, and sleeping in a vehicle is not allowed outside a registered site. Come in on CA-120, CA-140, or CA-41; from the Bay it is about 195 miles and four to five hours, from Sacramento about 176, from Los Angeles about 313. The Valley campgrounds and the Tioga high country are on the Yosemite campervan page.
South of the park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon are the same range from Fresno, General Sherman and a slow drive under thousand-year bark. In a longer rig, take CA-180 from Fresno into Kings Canyon, the road the Park Service points bigger vehicles to, because the CA-198 Ash Mountain approach advises against vehicles over 24 feet below Potwisha and over 22 feet up to Giant Forest. If you want more length or an actual hookup, the same regions in a bigger rig sit on the California RV page.
North on I-80, Donner Lake at Truckee is the alpine-lake end of the same Sierra axis, its lakeside loops open summer only. Farther north, Redding is the base for Shasta and Lassen. Sacramento, Modesto, Chico, Rocklin, and Bakersfield are the valley cities where a lot of California vans sit, each within a half-day of the range.
The Joshua Tree desert
Sleep at Jumbo Rocks or Hidden Valley inside the park, then give the morning to Park Boulevard, the desert loop, past branched Joshua trees against stacked monzogranite. It tops out at Keys View with the Coachella Valley dropping away to San Jacinto and San Gorgonio. There is no gas, food, or water inside the park either, so you arrive stocked. Approach on I-10 or CA-62, roughly 140 miles east of Los Angeles, with the South Entrance off I-10 about 25 miles east of Indio. The campground maps and the Jumbo Rocks night are on the Joshua Tree campervan page.
Palm Springs is the western base, with the Palms to Pines climb up to Idyllwild, and Indio and Coachella sit at the south approach. South of there the desert runs down into Anza-Borrego, the largest state park in California, which is a San Diego trip.
The Highway 1 coast
The cliffs south of Carmel are the coast trip people picture, kelp water below and the Big Sur River under redwoods at Pfeiffer. That is the stretch that is shut. The fire closure took the Big Sur state parks with the road, Pfeiffer Big Sur included, and Julia Pfeiffer Burns and its 80-foot McWay fall onto the cove sit behind the same gate. When the road reopens, the Big Sur overnights are a Monterey trip.
The coast you can book now is the south beach week. San Luis Obispo has Pismo, Morro Bay, and Montana de Oro; Santa Barbara has the bluff sites at El Capitan and Refugio; San Diego has bluff-top pads over the surf at San Elijo on Coast Highway 101, and inland it runs the Anza-Borrego loop, reservable October through April. These state beaches book on ReserveCalifornia's six-month window, so the good sites go early.
Carlsbad holds South Carlsbad, Costa Mesa reaches Crystal Cove, and San Clemente sits between San Onofre and Doheny. Los Angeles is the coast's big listing city, Malibu and the Angeles forest at its back. Most of the rest of the Southern California fleet is parked across Anaheim, Long Beach, Glendale, Westminster, Mission Viejo, Fontana, and Menifee. Inland, Temecula is the Southern California wine stop around Lake Skinner.
The Bay and wine country
Point Reyes gives you tule elk on the Tomales Point bluffs and an 1870 lighthouse at the end of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. You cannot camp a van inside the seashore, it is hike-in or boat-in only, so the drive-in night is Camp Taylor at Samuel P. Taylor, six miles from the Bear Valley visitor center. That weekend runs from San Francisco. North, the wine country and the Sonoma Coast overnights are a Sonoma trip, and San Jose reaches Henry Coe and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Bay listings also run out of Oakland, Mountain View, and Pleasanton.