The Napa Valley Expo's concrete pads sit at the edge of downtown Napa, a short walk from coffee, Oxbow Public Market and the Wine Train, and the rig stays on one of them all week. The car does the touring. It runs out along CA-29 to tasting rooms set between the vineyard rows, and some days it crosses the hills into the Sonoma Valley instead.
The rig stays put all week, and that is the whole plan. Each site at the Expo has full hookups with water, sewer, and 30 and 50 amp power, which earns its keep when a valley afternoon is hot enough to run the air conditioning until dinner. You come back from the last tasting room to a rig that has stayed cool all day.
Book this pad before you book the rig. The park closes for BottleRock from spring into June and for the Napa Town and Country Fair from late July into August, which makes the summer peak the hardest time to get in. Skyline Wilderness Park, also in Napa, is the in-town fallback, with full and partial hookups plus dry camping and a guaranteed site, though not a specific one.
For a night under trees, Bothe-Napa Valley State Park puts you in redwood and Douglas-fir shade on the Napa side of the hills. The campground caps motorhomes at 31 feet and trailers at 24 feet, with no hookups and no dump station, so a long rig stays at the Expo and anything that fits arrives with empty holding tanks and full fresh water. A couple who wants those redwoods, or Sugarloaf Ridge above the Sonoma Valley, is better off in a smaller rig built for two. Armstrong's redwoods, the Russian River and the Sonoma Coast north of it are a separate trip, based out of Santa Rosa.
Sonoma Raceway on a NASCAR or NHRA weekend
On a race weekend the engine noise rolls across the Sonoma hills, and the rigs lined up on the trackside terraces look down onto the road course. When the cars stop, the camping lots take over, with grills going and a party that carries into the night. Sonoma Raceway lists 11 camping options for its NASCAR and NHRA weekends, and a motorhome on the property means the grandstand is a walk and the drive home never happens.
Both race weekends land in summer, and they pull on the same rental rigs and the same wine-country pads as everyone else's summer week. Lock the race camping first, then the rig, and do it well ahead. Plenty of listing owners will deliver and set up a trailer at the track, but that is arranged listing by listing, and the raceway's camping rules still apply once it's parked.
Lake Berryessa's dry shore at Spanish Flat and Pleasure Cove
A lake week at Berryessa is dry camping along a long reservoir under the Vaca Mountains, with the boat pulled up below the pad and the kids in the water by mid-morning. It swaps tasting rooms for swimming and long evenings on the shore, and the rig runs on its own tanks for most of it.
Spanish Flat has 55 dry sites, a water spigot and an RV dump station, and that dump sets the rhythm of the week: run the tanks down, empty them at the station, and settle back in. At Pleasure Cove Marina, 11 partial-hookup sites have 30 amp power and water but no dumping, and weekends from April to October carry a two-night minimum.
A lot of trailers reach Berryessa without the renter ever towing, because owners deliver and set up at the site. Whether a given owner delivers at all is up to each listing.