Out past Diamond Head and the beaches at Waimanalo, the drive around Oahu turns north onto Kamehameha Highway and the windward coast opens up. The Koolau pali rises sheer and green on the left, cut with gullies and often capped in cloud, while surf breaks white around the small offshore islets on the right. That pairing of ridge and reef holds for most of the coast, past Kualoa and the valley at Kahana and on up to Malaekahana.
From there the highway rounds the top of the island onto the North Shore, where Pipeline draws a crowd to the sand whenever the winter swell is up, then turns back over the middle through Wahiawa and down into Honolulu. Most Oahu road trips are some version of this circle, and it comes home without retracing a mile.
A motorhome suits the circle because the day is a string of stops. The whole family rides together with the cooler, the beach chairs and a bathroom aboard. Lunch happens at the dinette with the door open to the trade wind, and nobody folds back into a rental sedan with sandy feet.
Plenty of groups split the loop across a few days, the windward side on one and the North Shore on the next, so each beach gets more than a photo. Each of those days ends wherever the motorhome is allowed to sleep, and on Oahu that's the thing to pin down before the booking, since none of the island's public campgrounds take a rig for the night.
Where an RV can and can't stay overnight on Oahu
Hoomaluhia looks like the campground made for a family week, a lake pooled at the foot of the Koolau with the ridge standing almost straight up behind it. It's off the list for the motorhome, because the City and County of Honolulu prohibits vehicular camping at its campgrounds as of September 2026.
The state campgrounds on Oahu, Malaekahana, Kahana, Keaiwa Heiau and Sand Island, are tent camping only as of September 2026. A family set on a night by the water at Malaekahana brings tents and a state permit, and the rig's night still needs its own legal spot.
Two people chasing Malaekahana and the North Shore, the Kualoa and Waimanalo stretch, or a Waikiki and Pearl Harbor day will find those trips on the Honolulu campervan page, where a smaller rig is usually the better fit. The one state park in the islands that allows a night in a vehicle is Waianapanapa on Maui, and the Maui RV page picks it up from there. For how the rules run on each island, start with the Hawaii RV page.
