Granite walls close in above the river as the motorhome climbs CA-140 toward Yosemite Valley, the start of the Sierra loop that fills most summer RV weeks in California. From the Bay Area the rig can cross the foothills on CA-120 instead. The first days go to the Valley floor and a run up the Tioga Road to the high meadows. Later in the week the loop swings south into Sequoia and Kings Canyon, where the trunks along the road are thick enough to make a family motorhome look small.
Yosemite's campgrounds have no hookups of any kind, so the rig lives on its tanks, battery and generator for as long as it stays in the park. Only eight Valley sites take a 40-foot motorhome, and many sites elsewhere stop at 35 feet for an RV and 24 for a trailer, as of September 2026. That's why the campsite gets booked before the rig. The site you land decides how long a motorhome you rent.
Plan the tanks around the dump stations at Upper Pines, open all year, and Wawona in summer, with Tuolumne's high-country station closed until further notice as of September 2026. That makes the Valley the place to empty them before a Tioga Road day. The road itself is summer-only, closed from about November through May.
The other way to do Yosemite in a rig is to sleep at a hookup park outside the gate and drive in by day. Modesto's RV page runs that trip up CA-120 from the lakes at Don Pedro.
The sequoia half of the loop takes its own route. The Park Service advises against vehicles 22 feet and over on the Generals Highway between Potwisha Campground and the Giant Forest Museum, which covers any family-size motorhome, so a rig comes in on CA-180 through the Big Stump entrance instead. CA-180 also runs on into Kings Canyon to Cedar Grove, a seasonal road.
The rest of the Sierra has its own RV pages. Truckee puts a big rig on Lake Tahoe, June Lake runs the Eastern Sierra with Mono Lake, Mammoth and the Tioga Road from the east, and Shaver Lake is the west-slope lakefront week with the boat.
One-way RV trips, Los Angeles to Las Vegas and San Francisco to Seattle
Some California RV weeks end in another state. The drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas crosses the Mojave on I-15 and drops down the long desert grade into the Las Vegas valley. San Francisco to Seattle goes north up the redwood coast, with nights among the big trees before the road crosses Oregon. From San Francisco the rig can also turn east over the Sierra toward Salt Lake City and Denver, taking Yosemite in on the way.
Between the two big cities, the coast road runs Los Angeles to San Francisco in either direction, and San Francisco's RV page takes that run along with the redwood road north. At the far end the rig goes back to the operator: Cruise America's Los Angeles (Carson) and San Francisco (Newark) hubs rent one-ways that finish at a different Cruise America location, and El Monte RV, which also books Mighty, counts Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego among its California one-way starts.
Joshua Tree, Anza-Borrego and Death Valley in winter
When the high Sierra closes, the rig goes to the desert and parks for a week. The season runs from October into May, with cold, clear nights over the creosote flats and days made for walking the washes.
Joshua Tree's namesake trees stand in open forests between piles of granite boulders. Inside the park, Black Rock takes RVs up to 35 feet by reservation and has a dump station, while Jumbo Rocks has no electric hookups. A week with power at the pad sleeps at one of the private RV parks in Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley or Twentynine Palms that the Park Service lists outside the park, and Orange's RV page builds the trip from a Coachella Valley resort with the park by day.
Anza-Borrego is the long parked week, dry washes with palms growing out of the rock and a desert town that fills with snowbirds. Borrego Palm Canyon has full-hookup RV sites, and its dump station closes from June through September, when the valley is too hot to camp anyway. San Diego's RV page and El Cajon's both come up from the coast for this week, El Cajon's by way of the hot springs at Agua Caliente.
Death Valley is the far end of the desert, salt flats below sea level and dunes that turn pink at dusk. Furnace Creek is the base, with 18 full-hookup sites at 30 and 50 amps with water and sewer, and dump stations around Furnace Creek. The Park Service says the campground is booked to capacity most days in season, so lock that site before anything else about the trip.
Bolsa Chica to Morro Bay, the coast as a parked week
The coast is the week the RV mostly stays put. At Bolsa Chica State Beach in Huntington Beach and Silver Strand near San Diego, the rigs park in a row on the sand with the surf line just past the bumper. Bolsa Chica's sites run 30 to 40 feet long and take factory-built self-contained RVs only, and Silver Strand requires fully self-contained rigs, with motorhomes up to 40 feet. Huntington Beach's RV page has the Bolsa Chica week.
Farther up the coast the parks trade sand for hookups. Pismo Coast Village sits between the dunes and a lagoon with 400 full-hookup sites at 30 and 50 amps, and Carpinteria State Beach has RV sites with hookups and a dump station. Morro Bay State Park takes RVs up to 35 feet, with electric hookups at some sites. Costa Mesa's RV page strings the three into a loop north, and summer weekends are when they fill.
For two people who want the Highway 1 drive through Big Sur instead of a parked week, the California campervan page covers that road in a smaller vehicle.
Wine country, the Gold Country and the Southern California mountains
North of San Francisco, the Napa side makes a parked wine week (Sonoma), and the Russian River runs out to the Sonoma Coast (Santa Rosa). The Gold Country around Nevada City and Grass Valley is the foothill week (Roseville). Pinnacles is the spring trip for the condors (San Jose).
In the south, the RV resorts outside Temecula make a wine week of their own (Temecula), and the family week parks the rig near Disneyland (Anaheim). The mountains are close too, Big Bear Lake (Westminster) and Palomar Mountain (San Marcos). The longer road runs north past the Alabama Hills toward Bishop and the Eastern Sierra (Santa Clarita).