Whenever I have a day or two off, I love to get out of town and see some place new. I recently took my first one dayroad trip with two of my best friends and had a great time, and I thought I would share what I learned.

First step in planning the day trip was to decide where to go. I chose a place that was five hours away. A five hour drive was totally do-able, but it was far enough away to feel like we were exploring a whole new land. We started in Baltimore, and ended up at Letchworth State Park in Upstate, New York. Another deciding factor that went into the location choice was what we wanted to do and whether we could do it in our allotted time frame. Scenic views and hiking are what we were looking for and Letchworth was a perfect fit. It is known as the “Grand Canyon of the East” and provided us with beautiful views of the sunrise and waterfalls. It also had many over looks and easily accessible trails that allowed us to see the most beautiful parts of the park without taking too long. We also decided that after we left the park, we wanted to head an hour north to see the city of Rochester before we headed home. This left us with a six hour drive home.

The second step in planning the trip was figuring out the time frame. We decided to leave very early in the morning in order to catch the sunrise in the park, and our goal was to make it back by the end of night. My boyfriend and I left Baltimore City at one on a Saturday morning. On our way north, we picked up my best friend from her house.

Another part of the trip that I considered, was how we were going to eat. I made some overnight oats the day before and brought them along with fresh fruit, bowls and spoons for our breakfast. I also brought a lot of snack food and some cans of soup.

Above, is what I planned, and below is how it unfolded.

So, we got out of the city as planned. My boyfriend did the first driving shift and my best friend took over until we made it to the park. We were still driving as the sun initially broke over the fields, but when we got into the park the sunlight was still golden and the temperature was still chilly. We got to see the canyon as the sun came up and then we drove on to a different part of the park.

We ate breakfast at an overlook that gave us a great view of the Middle Falls.

Then we followed a trail that led to the river bed and pretty close to the upper falls. We walked along the river bed and were amazed by the teal water and unusual terrain. As we were heading back to where our car was parked, we heard someone yelling “HEY!” at us, and after a bit of looking around, we found the source. A park maintenance employee walked up to us to tell us that the river bed is off limits to visitors and that we could have gotten a ticket for being down there. We had no idea that we weren’t allowed to be down there and that the “trail” we followed was not a real trail!

After that, we followed along clearly marked trails, saw lots of beautiful flowers and falls. We were so hungry at this point, and we made our way to the park restaurant. When we got there, it was not open yet (we were pretty early, due to our early start) so we explored the Lower Falls before eating lunch.

We left the park shortly after that and I drove us to Rochester. We had planned to eat dinner in the city, but because we were ahead of schedule, we had to come up with new plans. We searched online for the city's best parks and ended up going to Highland Park which had a reservoir, an arboretum (tree museum), and we got to visit the Lamberton Conservatory for $3 per ticket.

At about three p.m. we decided to begin our six hour journey back to Baltimore. On our way home we listened to Podcasts, and one of them talked about pizza, which left us all craving some hot, fresh, pizza! So, on our way home, we stopped in Pennsylvania for some pizza.

We made it home by 11 and made sure we got plenty of sleep!