Day Trips in the U.S.
 

You know, whenever I travel to Europe, I always go on a day trip either on my own or with a tour group. And the posts on the Europe Board seem to indicate that a lot of people do this. I don't see a lot of it on the US board, making me wonder if there aren't a lot of similar opportunities to do so like in Europe. The only ones I could think of were

Washington DC/Alexandria/Mount Vernon
Williamsburg/Yorktown/Jamestown
Las Vegas/Grand Canyon

anyone agree/disagree? anyone think of other "day" trips?

By day trip, I assume you mean you start and end at the original location. If that is the case, then I don't really consider Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon and back as a day trip. You spend 10 hours in a vehicle to get to the South Rim, and depending on what time of the year, you could only have a few hours there and be driving back in the dark.

I see day trips from Las Vegas mentioned a lot on this board. Other options are Red Rock Canyon, Valley of Fire, and Zion National Park.

Utahtea

There are "day trips" all over the US board. I doubt you can do a search using those words and find them, though. The US is just a huge place. If you want good day trip ideas from a particular city, do a search of that city and read the myriad of posts, and you will find plenty that discuss where one can go in a day.

There are tons of day trips all over the US - I've even seen articles on them in many of the major travel magazines. I think the difference is that most of them assume you will go by car - since the train system is largely moribund - and people on bus tours have generally bought a whole package including day tours.

And you forgot Atlantic City from NYC.

Click "Destinations" in the ugly orange banner at the top of this site. Click on a city (Phoenix/Scottsdale for example under AZ). You usually see "side trips" from the major destination cities and if you scroll a bit farther down you will see "related destinations" that are close enough to call day trips in most cases.

BTW- two side trips I have done in the past three months include Park City from Salt Lake City, UT and Sedona from Scottsdale, AZ.

There are quite a few opportunities for day trips out of SF - wine country, Point Reyes, San Mateo Coast, Santa Cruz, Monterey/Carmel.

Using the Monterey area as a base, there are easy day trips to Big Sur, Carmel Valley, Santa Cruz, San Juan Bautista.

The same can be said about LA, San Diego, Santa Barbara and any number of cities and towns along the California coast.

You can take a bus from NYC to Philly for a day trip.

You can take many day trips in the South (Savannah to Charleston) or (Highlands, NC to Asheville, NC) for instance.

You can take a day trip from Tampa to Disneyworld.