What are the best day trips from your city?

Santa Barbara.

The Hudson Valley

The Laurel Highlands

Melk and the Wachau. Take the train out, and a boat back.

It’s sort of a tourist trap, but I do enjoy Catalina Island once a year. Especially if you get out of the main strip in Avalon when the cruise ships dock and it gets overrun.

Julian is nice in fall. Ojai not during summer is nice for riding your bike or hiking in the nearby Los Padres National Forest.

South of the border, the wine country in Baja California is very nice. Some good wines and excellent food.

The further north along PCH 1 is beautiful as you approach Big Sur, although that’s not really much of a day trip from LA anymore.

Charlottesville for sophisticated, small town charm. Home of the University of Virginia, lots of independent bookstores, and nearby wineries to tour.

For a taste of the big city, Washington DC. Museums galore, great restaurants and hotels and for this rube, people watching.

I live in the Hudson Valley in a charming hamlet so I do a reverse day trip to the city now and then.

If you’re a fan of the desert, the Kelso dunes in the Mojave are worth a trip to see scenery that looks straight out of the Sahara.

If you ask most Angelenos, millions will tell you San Diego. Although personally, I don’t really “get” SD. I don’t dislike it, it just feels like a smaller, cleaner LA, or more and more, like a continuation of the Orange County suburbs.

Ithaca New York and the Finger Lakes Region, Amish Country, the Catskills and some of the smaller towns on the Jersey Shore

The Cotswolds.

Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey

San Jose, but I never get there

The Michigan coast.

R8 take a hike in Torrey Pines down to the Del Mar beach - incredibly lovely. One of the most beautiful hikes in California. The only equivalent to this in the US is the Na Pali coast in Kauai.

R14, that looks beautiful. I am a major fan of Black’s Beach, so maybe I need to take a weekend and explore more of the SD that I’m unfamiliar with.

Bar Harbor.

I live on the Jersey shore and the best day trips are to NYC and New Hope PA.

The Oregon Coast, Mt. Hood, Columbia River Gorge, Olympic Peninsula, Bend, Oregon, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, my. Rainier, Leavenworth, WA.

Actually, this place is beautiful

I will say that one of the things I don't like about living in DC is the day trip options kind of suck. If you are into places like Williamsburg, Charlottesville and Annapolis that's fine but to me they're all boring.

Lancaster County, Hershey, Gettysburg, Baltimore, NYC, DC.

Lake Rabun

Philly has no good day trips. New Hope and Lancaster have both been turned into exurbia. Jersey Shore and Rehoboth are ugly. The Poconos are filled with run down deplorable towns.

I envy DC - I would like to have Charlottesville or the Eastern Shore of MD as day trip/weekend spots.

Potsdam

Why jet to Europe, when you have nearby Helen, Ga ?

I think SoCal has the most options of any place in the US.

I live near Asheville, NC. Why would I want to go anywhere else?

Rikers Island

Boston is day trip nirvana

Agree Boston and LA are the best cities for day trips. Also San Francisco.

Tucson, Sedona, Flagstaff, Prescott, Jerome

Train trip to la posada. Though more a weekend trip.

To add a few more suggestions:

The Angeles Forest and San Gabriel mountains are underrated day trips for Angelenos. Drive up the Angeles Crest Highway or Highway 39, up beyond the front country mountains, and you have entire pristine chaparral and mountains that make you forget you’re only an hour away from 15 million other people. The first come, first serve, unreservable Buckhorn campground is the nicest one in the entire area.

Antelope Valley Poppy reserve is cool to check out entire meadow of poppies when they are in full bloom.

Big Bear, Green Valley Lake, and Crestline are nice for renting a cabin up in the San Bernardino mountains.

Palm Springs makes for a fun weekend if you rent an AirBnB or VRBO in the movie colony with friends and spend your time having poolside drinks and enjoying the weather and slow vibe. Take the aerial tramway up to Mt. San Jacinto for cooler temperatures.

Willamette Valley Wine Country

I live on the Kitsap peninsula, so it's a short drive to the Hood Canal Bridge and the Olympic Peninsula. Take your pick of Lake Crescent (and the Lodge), the ocean beaches (I'm partial to Kalaloch but Ruby Beach has the sea stacks), the rainforest, some picturesque lighthouses and the broad sandy beaches at Westport. You can see whales and pods of orca from,pretty much any point on the ocean coast. There's also Forks to the north and Aberdeen to the south if you're into morbid artistic pilgrimages (Twilight, Cobain).

Or you can take a ferry to one of islands like Whidbey or Or as--both have plenty of charming towns, inns, etc., if you prefer that to camping, hiking and fishing.

I have no idea what any of R35 ‘s proper nouns represent - lol

Sorry, R36, I just assumed references to the Pacific Ocean, Olympic Mountains, orca whales, Twilight and Kurt Cobain would have pretty firmly established the location, but for the less swift there's