Start at Leo Carrillo, up PCH past Malibu, where the campground sits under giant sycamores and a pedestrian tunnel runs beneath the highway to a mile and a half of beach, tide pools, and sea caves. Sites go on sale through ReserveCalifornia six months ahead on a rolling window, and the summer weekends move, so lock the overnight first and pick the van around the nights you got (Leo Carrillo, ReserveCalifornia). Cancellations do surface same-day if your dates are loose. The Santa Monica Mountains climb straight off that overnight, so the hiking starts where you parked.
Most of the canyon hiking happens at Malibu Creek State Park, where oak and sycamore drop to the Rock Pool in the volcanic rock, Century Lake sits past that, and a fire road ends at the old MASH filming site. It is also the overflow when Leo Carrillo fills, four miles south of the 101, no electric and a 30-foot cap. The better sites there go through a monthly reservation draw (Malibu Creek).
Back on the coast and further up, Point Mugu is the bigger park, five miles of shoreline and more than 70 miles of trail running up two river canyons. Sycamore Canyon takes rigs to 31 feet and has showers and a dump station. Thornhill Broome is the one to angle for, though, a line of pads on the sand with the surf a few steps past the fire ring and PCH at your back, no shade and chemical toilets. It floods on high tides and tidal surges, so ask the park about the tide the day you arrive (Point Mugu).
Keep going north on PCH and the coast becomes Santa Barbara's, which has its own Santa Barbara campervan lander. The state park campgrounds along this whole stretch top out around 30 to 31 feet (California State Parks), so if you want more length or more beds than a van gives you, the California RV rentals hub has the bigger classes.
Angeles National Forest and a mountain weekend on CA-2
North and up, the Angeles National Forest trades all of that for pine and granite, nearly 700,000 acres of it, with the chaparral giving way as CA-2 climbs. Chilao camps at 5,300 feet in a boulder field of pines, both loops open and first-come as of August 2026, 20 dollars a night (Angeles NF). Size is the filter. The Forest Service posts an 18-foot RV maximum and no hookups, which is why a Sprinter-class van tends to day-hike the Crest and sleep back on the coast.
Access is the other catch. Caltrans has SR-2 closed from just east of Newcomb's Ranch to SR-138 for winter-storm repairs with no reopening date as of August 2026 (Caltrans), so reach Chilao from La Cañada Flintridge on I-210 and CA-2 and double back rather than running the whole Crest. Buckhorn, the other camp people name up here, sits past the closure, which leaves Chilao as the open one (Angeles NF).
Joshua Tree and Yosemite, the long drives from LA
Both are their own trip once you get there, not a side stop off a Malibu weekend. Joshua Tree is the desert run east, worth its own days among the monzogranite and the Joshua trees, and it lives on the Joshua Tree campervan lander. Yosemite is the Sierra run north, granite and waterfalls on a much longer drive, covered on the Yosemite campervan lander.