Moterra’s Co-founder Interviews Multi-time Renter, Peter

February 26, 2026/inCampervan Guide

Some people travel to see something new. Others travel to see something familiar more clearly.

Peter falls into the second camp.

When Trevor James, co-founder of Moterra Campervans, sat down with Peter earlier this year, the numbers alone told part of the story. Thirteen trips with Moterra across forty-six nights. Vans picked up so often it began to feel like revisiting old friendships. But the real story wasn’t volume—it was return.

Peter lives in San Francisco, a city uniquely positioned between ocean and mountain. Yosemite became his entry point during COVID, first as a visitor, then briefly as a volunteer. That experience changed the relationship. “When you volunteer,” he says, “you stop feeling like a tourist. It becomes your park.”

This conversation between one of Moterra’s founders, Trevor, and a multi-time renter, Peter, covers expert tips for visiting Yosemite, traveling in peak season, utilizing Moterra’s itinerary planning service, highlights of Peter’s Jackson trip, memorable moments in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, and the experience of camper van travel.

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite, of course, is more than its postcard landmarks. While Yosemite Valley holds the icons—El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls—it also concentrates the crowds.

Fun fact: Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America when its upper, middle, and lower sections are combined.

Peter’s advice for first-time visitors is practical and experienced: start in the Valley, then move outward. “The high country off Tioga Road is where things really open up,” he says. Timing matters, too. May and June bring peak waterfalls and wildflowers, while fall trades spectacle for solitude.

The campervan makes this possible. Not as a novelty, but as a tool.

Yosemite Campervan Moterra

When Peter talks about traveling this way, he avoids romantic exaggeration. What he emphasizes instead is consistency. “It’s not a car and it’s not an RV,” he says. “It’s a small apartment that moves. You unpack once. You learn where everything lives. You stop losing things because nothing ever leaves.”

That constancy changes how days unfold. Being already inside the park means early starts without logistical friction. Coffee brewed at the trailhead. First steps on quiet trails. “You’re hiking while other people are still driving in,” Peter notes. “That alone changes the experience.”

Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks

Eventually, even Yosemite wasn’t enough. Yellowstone and the Tetons had been on Peter’s list for years, but unfamiliar scale made planning intimidating. Distances are deceptive there, wildlife unpredictable, and infrastructure sparse in ways California parks are not. For the first time, he opted to add on Moterra’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton Itinerary.

What followed wasn’t rigidity, but relief. “They didn’t start with reservations,” Peter recalls. “They started by asking how we like to travel.” How early to wake. How far to hike. When to be done for the day. The result was a week that balanced ambition with breathing room.

Yellowstone Moterra Trip

Yellowstone delivered its expected drama—Old Faithful, watched twice under different skies; Grand Prismatic’s improbable color; wildlife encounters that felt less like sightings and more like inevitabilities. (Lamar Valley, often called the Serengeti of North America, hosts the park’s densest concentration of large mammals.) But the moments that lingered were quieter: a remote campground with a hand-pumped well, bison wandering past the host site, laughter over something as mundane as filling water bottles.

The Tetons followed with a different tone. A boat ride across Jenny Lake. A long hike into Cascade Canyon. Less spectacle, more immersion. “That hike,” Peter says, “was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever done.”

So whats next for Peter? Glacier National Park.

Glacier National Park

Its reputation precedes it—turquoise lakes, jagged peaks, the engineering marvel of Going-to-the-Sun Road—but for Peter, the appeal is familiar by now. New terrain, same rhythm. A week in one place. Time to walk it slowly. (Interesting note: Going-to-the-Sun Road was intentionally built along a more difficult route so travelers could experience the landscape more intimately, even at great cost to its construction.)

What keeps Peter coming back isn’t novelty or gear. It’s ease. “Within five minutes of driving the van,” he says, “it feels familiar.” And beyond that, it’s people who work at Moterra. Questions answered quickly. Thoughtfulness carried through. A sense that the trip matters to someone else, too.

That’s the quiet power of return travel. The landscape doesn’t change. You do.

And that, ultimately, is the measure of a place—not whether you’ve been there, but whether you want to go back.

Glacier Moterra Campervan Trip

Recommended Trips

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Gateway City: Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Side View of Moterra Montana Sprinter Campervan Rental in Glacier National Park with Mountains in Background

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