Our Favorite Places to RV
We often get asked, “Where is your favorite place to RV?” Nailing down one favorite place or even area is impossible!
We have some favorite areas in certain seasons, and there are some places that definitely stand out that we love to revisit, so we will highlight some of those for you! We haven’t been everywhere in our RV, including most of the East Coast, but based on our RV travels from the past 3.5 years, we wanted to share some of our top spots.
WINTER
We chase mild weather, so our top winter destinations are warm places:
Florida
Southern California
Baja California, Mexico.
Florida
Florida gets insanely busy in the winters, so after one season of stressful planning and playing the game of trying to get reservations, we haven’t been excited to do that again.
If you do want to give it a try, we highly recommend a Thousand Trails membership and you can learn the ins and outs of wintering in FL using the Thousand Trails system HERE.
We like staying in the Orlando area or south of it during the winter, as our favorite places in the northern parts of the state can be pretty cool in the months of November through April (Destin and Jacksonville for example.)
The one thing that would pull us back to Florida is reservations in the Keys. Our reservations two years ago got canceled due to Covid lockdowns, so we’re eager to visit for the first time!
Southern California
Southern California is a nice place to spend winter, and the Palm Springs area is one of our favorites at that time. It’s the warmest area of SoCal and there are several good RV parks to choose from there.
Since we are Thousand Trails members, we enjoy staying at Palm Springs RV Resort. We also love Boondocking near Joshua Tree National Park, which is about 40 minutes from the Palm Springs area.
San Diego could be on the list for every season of the year since average temperatures stay between 67-77 degrees year around. We absolutely love this city but it can be pricey. Staying a little inland can help cut down the costs. Sweetwater Summit Regional Park Campground and Pio Pico Thousand Trails are two affordable options, but if you have the budget, there are beautiful places closer to downtown and the Pacific Ocean.
Baja California Peninsula
In December of 2021, after hearing wonderful things and doing a ton of planning, we decided to trek down to Mexico and explore the Baja Peninsula for the first time,
We absolutely fell in love and have decided it will be our annual winter destination. We bought a piece of property in the south end of Baja, by the beach, to ensure we will always have a place to land there!
The further south we went, the more we loved it, so it will take a commitment to visit some of our favorite towns and beaches in Baja California Sur. Even so, there are some nice spots on the northern end of Baja that are worth looking into.
You can read about our route through Baja HERE.
SPRING
Many places on our Spring and Fall recommendation list can be interchanged, so depending on your route for the previous season, you can really enjoy our Spring recommendations in the Fall, and vice versa.
East
If you enjoy an early spring, the southeast is a great place to see trees and flowers bloom into life - as long as you don’t suffer from allergies! I was born and raised in Georgia, and spring is beautiful there. However, you deal with nasty pollen which will cover everything, and allergies galore (if you suffer from them).
Other places in the southeast that are great in the spring:
The surround areas of Great Smokey Mountain National Park (also great for Fall!)
West
As much of the east turns green in spring, much of the west is too, just a bit later. In places that get a lot of snow, it can take a while for the snow to melt, which prolongs access to certain roads and areas.
If you are spending the winter in California, keeping an eye on warming temperatures and slowly climbing up the coast is lot of fun. We loved our stays in and around the towns of:
My personal favorite place to spend spring is Yosemite National Park. The snow is melting, so the waterfalls are rushing like crazy. If you can time your visit after spring break but before school is out for summer, there will be less crowds! Weekends are still crazy in the park, so we stay just outside the park in Yosemite Valley Campground, and only go in to the national park on weekdays.
Also mentioned in the summer category, late spring (June) is a fabulous time to visit Lake Tahoe. Summer crowds can jam up the area, but June is a great time to visit. The water is chilly but swimmable/enjoyable and the evening temperatures are still cool enough to enjoy campfires. We enjoy staying at Tahoe Valley Campground and boondocking at Hope Valley Dispersed Camping.
Sedona, Arizona and southern Utah are absolutely stunning places to visit before it gets too hot.
Sedona has great boondocking spots but also nice RV parks nearby. We have done both and enjoyed both experiences.
Exploring the 5 Utah National Parks in April and May will give you great weather and will allow you to beat the summer vacation crowds. The great thing about the west in general is that there is plenty of boondocking spots if you want to RV for for free and stay away from crowds.
SUMMER
In summer, we love heading north to (usually) escape super hot temps and enjoy the spots that are far too cold for us in the other three seasons! We haven’t been to Maine yet, but we’ve heard from friends it’s a primo summer destination! We also haven’t toured South Dakota yet, but it’s on the list as a hot summer spot.
Great for short visits (vacation spots)
We visited Colorado one summer, and while we loved the beauty, we didn’t love the prices or scarce reservations. You have to plan WELL in advance and be prepared to pay a pretty penny for RV parks there.
If you’re thrifty like me, trying to find boondocking spots in CO is your best bet! We boondocked near Great Sand Dunes National Park and Dinosaur National Monument in CO, and paid for parks in Colorado Springs, Estes Park, and Gunnison. This summer we are heading back Colorado for a bit, visiting Gunnison again and boondocking near Silverton.
The Pacific Northwest is full of great areas to visit in summer! All the National Parks up there are must see’s. Some of our favorites are:
Places we could spend all summer
We adore the northern California coast. The entire Pacific Coast Highway is just stunning, and there is plenty to do all around the area for a full summer of fun.
Lake Tahoe is a place we would stay for months at a time as well due to it’s beauty and abundance of fun things to do.
The entire Oregon coast has a lot of fun little towns that we would enjoy spending all summer visiting. Some favorite spots are:
South Jetty
Idaho is probably the most underrated summer destination. Coeur d'Alene and Sandpoint in northern Idaho are great towns with a lot to do all summer.
The smaller towns in Idaho don’t have as much going on, but their beauty and pleasant weather definitely makes them worth visiting. Places like Priest Lake, Donnelly, McCall, Stanley, Ketchum / Sun Valley are beautiful, fun, small towns that we would love to visit again.
After exploring Idaho and if you have enough warm weather left, make sure to check some of our other summer favorites up north (listed from North to South) :
Glacier National Park (we have friends that spent an entire summer just in this area!)
Flathead Lake, Montana
FALL
We lived in Virginia for about 10 years and know that the east coast is a great place to see tons of fall colors in the fall.
We loved exploring Lake Michigan in the fall of 2020. Michigan blew us away with it’s autumn colors!
We drove up through Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and were caught off guard by how much beauty we saw. Make sure to check out:
Munising Falls, Miners Rock and Miners Beach on Lake Superior.
Once you get to the Lower Peninsula, some must vist areas in the fall are:
For more details about our time in Michigan, check out our post about RVing in Michigan
As we said previously, Some of our Spring recommendations would work great for the fall, specifically the areas around Great Smokey Mountain National Park
In general, autumns out west aren’t as colorful, and in my opinion this is the one season that the north, east and south all beat out the west!