RV / Motorhome - any trip reports?

[School teacher]

Hi, has anyone done the west coat in a motorhome? Does anyone know of any trip reports to read? Thanking you in advance x

[BevS97]

This is on my bucket list. I just worry about driving the large vehicle. And how you cope with transport once you’ve parked up.

[Northtim]

We have done this, no trip report I’m afraid.

We hired a (huge) RV in San Francisco and drove from there down PCH to LA, then inland up through Bakersfield to Yosemite before returning to SF.

We really enjoyed it but it does take some planning.

Negatives first - my first hour of driving was scary. Our RV was the size of a lorry and we were straight into the Freeway out of SF in this huge thing - soon got used to it though. Also RV is no good in cities - this only affected us in LA, we stayed in a lovely RV site in Malibu and tried driving into LA to look around but it was just hard work and not enjoyable.

Good bits - stayed in some amazing sites along coast and in Yosemite. Driving PCH in RV was great - sat high up and lots of places to stop and never found parking an issue. Lots of RV’s on that route so guess they are well set up for it.

Top tip - plan your route well in advance and book your stops early (especially Yosemite which sells out as soon as it goes on sale in high season). Don’t move on everyday or you will spend too much time driving - we stopped 2 nights near Monterey & in Yosemite and should have had another 2 night stop lower down PCH, maybe Santa Barbara area to break things up.

We rented through a comparison site called Ideamerge and all went smoothly.

Hope this helps. It is different from a car road trip, and some limitations with driving a huge RV and location of campsites, but we really enjoyed it. Well worth trying at least once.