The Low Desert Run: an RV rental tour run, Jan–Feb 2027

2 easy drive days at ~300 miles a day

• Lassen Volcanic — Active hydrothermal areas — Bumpass Hell, Sulphur Works, Devils Kitchen — give Lassen its identity, and the park enforces strict on-trail discipline because the thin ground crust around boiling mud pots has fatal collapse history. (in California)
• Kings Canyon — Highway 180 from Grant Grove down to Cedar Grove drops 4,700 vertical feet in 31 miles — one of the deepest paved-road descents in the national park system — and the road itself closes November through April every year regardless of snowpack. (in California)

an easy drive day at ~300 miles a day

• Pinnacles — California condors — the largest land bird in North America with a 9.5-foot wingspan — are seen from Pinnacles' high country roughly 4 days a week per the park's volunteer logs, the densest reliable wild population south of the Big Sur cliffs. (in California)
• Humboldt Redwoods — More old-growth coast redwood than anywhere else on Earth — 17,000 acres of it, including the 51-acre Rockefeller Forest, the largest contiguous virgin redwood stand still standing. (in California)

an easy drive day at ~300 miles a day

• Henry Cowell Redwoods — Old-growth coast redwoods 277 feet tall ring the campground loops on a fluvial terrace above the San Lorenzo River — and the trees themselves dictate site geometry. (in California)
• Julia Pfeiffer Burns — McWay Falls — the 80-foot tidewater fall plunging directly into the Pacific from a wave-cut bench — is the only reason most travelers stop, and the visit is structured entirely around the 0.6-mile Overlook Trail. (in California)