Planning for April 2017

Hi RTA - Looking for advice/guidance with planning a 14 night road-trip next April with my wife and 2 young kids (5 and 7). I am planning to rent a suitable sized RV for the trip (versus hotels / motels). Likely itinerary will be to fly into San Francisco and finish at Los Angeles. Places that I would like to visit include San Francisco, Lake Tahoe (optional), Yosemite NP, Sequoia NP, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Hooverdam, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles. Any advice on how to manage this in a 14 night trip? Our preference is to spend more time visiting Natural wonders versus spending time in San Francisco / Los Angeles (although we would like to get a brief flavour of both cities). Thanks for any advice.

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

Taking your itinerary at face value, you've got a minimum of four solid days of driving, and that's before yo account for the slower pace of an RV. When you factor in crossing and re-crossing the Sierra Nevada and the speed limits in national parks, as well as the extra time to stow everything in the RV for travel every morning, it will end up being more like five. I'm also assuming that there will be a day's worth of flying at either end, and that those days will include picking up and dropping off the RV with all the equipment checks and paper work that that entails. So, of your 14 days you're left with seven to actually see and experience stuff. A full day in San Francisco and Los Angeles (in addition to the aforementioned travel work) leaves you five for everything else and that's simply not enough for Yosemite, Sequoia, Death Valley, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon let alone Tahoe and everything else in between. Something's got to give if you want to actually spend some relaxing time at any of the places on your list. Personally, I would lean towards dropping Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon and Los Angeles, concentrating on northern California and returning to San Francisco.

AZBuck

Personally speaking I think you can make a great trip while creating a loop and returning to the same city, using LA, SF or LV as a start finish point depending on where you can find the best flight deals. For example, start in SF and head down the coast through Big Sur and then from LA head direct to the Grand canyon. From there you would drive to Hoover dam on route to Vegas, across Death valley and around the southern end of the mountains to Sequoia NP and finally Yosemite before heading back to SF. Lake Tahoe would be a bit much as it's further out than anywhere else from the loop.