Plenty of time for planning.
Hello and welcome to RTA !
With your 'wish list' of places to visit you are much better suited to a loop trip really. In this case you can start from any one of the City's on your route. Therefor, look at the cheapest place to start from with combined flight and RV rental costs by price comparing. It would seem your choices would be LA,SD, LV or SF.
Starting in LA for example you could go LA>SD>Grand canyon>Zion NP [Utah] Las Vegas> Yosemite[via Death valley]> San Fran and back to LA. Travelling in this direction [rom anywhere] will put the Ocean on your side of the road when heading south down the coastal Highway. Other options along the way would include Hoover Dam, Monument valley, Antelope canyon and Bryce canyon to name a few.
There are a limited number of RV parks around SF and a quick search will reveal them. [The names of them escape me] One in particular I know has a shuttle bus service downtown. If you were to start in SF, I would not pick up the RV untill the day you leave to begin the road trip. As this trip is for next summer you should have no problem getting an RV site in Yosemite. As with all major parks you will need to book as soon as the booking window opens, [literally] to secure a spot. It's well worth it, as it saves the time and hassel of driving in every day and you can catch the free shuttle buses around the parks and the leave the RV where it is. You can find all the info at nps.gov on all parks and campgrounds within them.
With 14 days you could cover all these places, but it would mean keeping on the move and you will have to sit down and discuss how long you plan to spend in any one place.
A few years ago we made our first RV trip out of San Fran and loved every moment. If you have the time you might get a few ideas from our report found here. Camping in the National parks is truly amazing !
You will find a lot more reading material throughout the forums, so have a little search around and as new questions crop up, just ask !
I would book NP campgrounds.
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Hope the UK summer isn't causing you any problems down there.
Summer ?! That's long gone, we had 2 weeks in March. ;-) A few branches down [one huge one ner my house] in these gales still blowing, but not too bad. Thanks.
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can I avoid D Valley?
Yes you can. You could head north out of Vegas on US95 to NV266/CA266/NV264/US6/CA120/US395/CA120 and into Yosemite NP over Tioga pass. [Not as complicated as it sounds]. If Vegas was not a must, or you visited on the way to the GC, then from Zion NP you could cut across to Tonopah via the ET highway. [See the route in the report I linked you too. It will be in reverse order.] A third option would be to head south around the mountains via Barstow and Bakersfield and perhaps visit Sequoia NP.
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What's the story if you decide you can't get to a camp site because it's too late and pull up somewhere, will you get the Boys in Blue knocking on your door at 03.00 or is it just not the done thing?
Either that or worse still, an angry land owner ! As I mentioned previously, if you work your itinerary out I would book the NP campgrounds as soon as possible. They are in wonderful settings, will save driving and the hassel of getting in and out of the parks which could save a couple of hours driving or more. If you don't want to be tied down that's fine, but a lot of your 4-5 hours of driving per day could be eaten up driving around looking for campgrounds and in and out of parks. Most parks have free shuttle buses, so once parked up you can have a day or 2 with no driving and relax. Remember these places are HUGE !
