From a paved pad at Liberty Harbor RV Park in Jersey City, Manhattan is lit up across the harbor. On a long run to Florida or Los Angeles, that's the first night's view and the most famous one of the whole trip. The PATH train and the ferry go into the city if dinner over there sounds better than the grill.
From the harbor the rig heads south down the Atlantic coast or west across Pennsylvania toward the Pacific, with a long string of campground nights ahead in either direction. The motorhome gets left at the far end once the driving is done, so families plan these as two-ended trips.
Families who want the week without leaving New Jersey go the other way, down to the bottom of the shore, where the big resorts outside Cape May and Wildwood set a rig up for the whole week.
New Jersey to Florida and the drive west to Los Angeles
The Florida run follows the Atlantic seaboard through the Mid-Atlantic and the Carolinas, and at heart it's a cold-weather trip, leaving New Jersey's winter behind one state at a time. Deep-winter departures still start in a freeze, so plan the first few nights south for frozen hoses and cold mornings before the coast warms up. In spring the same coast works the other way, following the warm weather north from Florida and finishing back in New Jersey with the Manhattan skyline filling the windshield.
The cross-country drop is the long one, west across Pennsylvania, the Midwest and the Southwest to Los Angeles and the Pacific. It's the trip for a family with real time off and kids who don't mind long driving days, with a new state outside the door most mornings.
El Monte RV's one-way page lists both trips as of October 2026, Florida up the coast to New York City and New York to Los Angeles. The New Jersey end is the Linden branch El Monte RV shares with Mighty, at the same address as Road Bear RV's New York branch, roughly 10 to 20 miles from Newark airport by the operators' own counts.
The Jersey Shore with a big rig, Cape May and Wildwood
Off Route 9 behind Cape May, families back a rig onto a shaded gravel pull-through for the week while beach trolleys and boardwalk traffic roll past toward Wildwood. Victorian Cape May is a short drive one way and the Wildwood boardwalk the other, so the rig stays plugged in all week while the bikes and the beach chairs do the moving. In July that means the air conditioning runs all afternoon without anyone thinking about a generator.
Sun Retreats Cape May Wildwood on Route 9 has full-hookup pull-throughs on gravel to 70 feet and deluxe pull-throughs with patios to 60, on 20, 30 or 50 amp service, as of October 2026. Over on Seashore Road, Sun Retreats Seashore keeps paved full-hookup sites to 45 feet, mostly back-ins with a smaller set of pull-throughs, on 30 or 50 amp.
Summer weekends fill the resorts near the boardwalk, so reserve the site first and choose a rig that fits its length. October is quieter, with cooler nights and the Spooktacular weekend at the Route 9 resort before the season wraps up.
For two people, Cape May Point at the very tip of the peninsula and the state parks inland at High Point and Round Valley make a smaller trip, and New Jersey campervan rentals are built around them. The Delaware Water Gap and the Kittatinny ridge make a weekend out of Newark, and Island Beach and the Pine Barrens do the same from Lakewood.
