RV road trip San Fran to San diego
 

Youngest has always wanted to do a trip in a big American RV. And daughter wants to visit California so trying to combine the 2. Had anyone dine a trip report on this or could anyone point me in the direction of RV hire pick up at San Fran return to San diego or other way round?

Hi first off its a good trip to do but but may not the best mode of transport for the north end of the PCH highway which at times is narrow and twisty. Yes you could do it but may not be that pleasurable a drive for you or the cars behind. I have scene threads on RV before but think they where working out very expensive from what I remember on the threads.

If you want an RV I wouldn’t do that route. Navigating SF, LA, Big Sur in an RV would be a nightmare. You have to find campsites and they are far outside the cities so you would then be stuck on there and relying on Ubers to take you into the cities for sightseeing. The locals you’ll notice tow their car behind the RV to get around that problem.

If the RV is the most important part of the trip then I would go somewhere more RV friendly. Perhaps a trip around the 5 big National Parks in Utah/Arizona. You could fly into either Phoenix or Las Vegas and start from there.

I agree. Sounds good in principle but in practice RVs are inconvenient. I certainly wouldn't want to do PCH in one!
Like another poster says, the RV parks are often out of the cities leaving you stuck for getting around.
I assume you would want to do LA/Disney etc? That would be hard work!
If you have time, why dont you hire an RV for part of the trip maybe do Yosemite?) then either fly or drive in a car to other places?

An RV down PCH is no problem whatsoever. Only a few places where you have to be careful as you will need the complete road to make a corner, but it's not that busy a road.

Depends on what you want to do in some of the cities as to whether it is practical there. RV parks exist near the cities but often just car parks. You will need to be prepared for using Uber etc to get about in those locations.

Cost wise, you need to price up the RV + mileage + accessories. They charge additionally for mileage and things like cutlery, linen etc which can make the initial price of the RV rise considerably on a longer distance vacation.

A more RV friendly holiday may be San Fran to Yosemite through death Valley to Las Vegas (RV park next to Circus Circus on the strip). You could the loop back across to La and back up the PCH. Reverse order would also work.

Thanks for everyone's advise maybe best to do an RV for a different trip roads don't sound the best

We hired an RV in SF in 2013 and drove it down PCH to LA, then inland via Bakersfield to Yosemite and dropped back in SF.

Setting off from SF for the first time was truly terrifying, the RV was the size of a removal lorry! However soon got used to it and within an hour it was all OK.

We didn't find PCH an issue at all and drove that quite easily in our huge RV.

Cities are a problem, but that only affected us in LA. We stayed in Malibu which was not far out and drove into LA once to have a look around and find the Hollywood Sign. RV in LA was not fun and we just spent ages trying to find the sign (which we did eventually) then headed out of the city.

We planned and booked our stops in advance and stayed in some absolutely spectacular sites on Monteray Bay, Big Sur, Pismo Beach, Ventura, Malibu, Fresno & the highlight - Yosemite. You need to be very organised and book the sites as soon as you can so you have the best choice and location. Particularly Yosemite which sells out literally a few minutes after going on sale in peak season. RV is not an easy thing to move around so if you are stuck in an out of the way site you are restricted.

We found driving and parking easy enough but we had planned it all well in advance. The Pro's were the cost and freedom of the road. The cons were slow progress so driving took longer, and having such a large vehicle to park up if we wanted to stop anywhere.

I would say it is definitely worth doing at least once and staying on the great sites in the National Parks. But if you want to explore cities and be more flexible car/suv and hotels/motels will be better. Whatever you do take care what RV sites you choose as some are part tourer/part permanent sites which seem a bit iffy - easy to avoid those by planning in advance.

We booked through https://www.ideamerge.com/united-sta...-van-hire.html. They were recommended to us and the RV hire all went very smoothly.

I think you should consider it, I have done the PCH twice and RV's were everywhere. from what I could see, none of them had difficulty with the road and nearly every car park accommodated them. Don't worry about going slow, most that travel that route are doing the same as you, sight seeing.

Dave

Yep - I'd agree. PCH was absolutely fine when we did it in RV. Lots of people doing similar and parking etc along the route not a problem, plus being high up in RV you can see even better!

It really is only LA which is a challenge. So really depends on what you want to do there if anything.