104 Days Trips from Rochester

Inspired by Route 104—which traces the ancient shoreline of glacial Lake Iroquois and connects many corners of our region—this guide gathers day trips from Rochester featured in my book, 104 Day Trips from Rochester, New York.

The destinations stretch from Rochester and the Genesee Valley to the Lake Ontario shoreline, the Finger Lakes, Western New York, and Central New York. Use the list as a starting point, then follow the linked place names for more ideas and practical details.

You do not have to go anywhere today—just start imagining where you might go next.

Genesee Valley

Start close to home with Rochester’s public spaces, museums, historic sites, parks, and waterways, then follow the Genesee River south through the valley to Letchworth and Stony Brook.

1. Rochester Public Market
   Serving the community since 1905, the Rochester Public Market is one of the city’s most active gathering places, far more than a place to buy groceries.
2. High Falls
   The Genesee River plunges ninety-six feet at High Falls, a waterfall in the center of Rochester that powered the city’s early flour mills, industries, and rapid nineteenth-century growth.
3. Rochester Red Wings Baseball
   A summer evening at the ballpark remains a familiar seasonal tradition for many Rochester-area residents.
4. Susan B. Anthony Museum & House
   The modest brick home where Susan B. Anthony lived for forty years remains a Rochester landmark in the history of the women’s suffrage movement.
5. Highland Park
   Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Highland Park is a Rochester landscape defined by rolling glacial hills, winding paths, and a diverse collection of trees and shrubs.
6. Mount Hope Cemetery
   Founded in 1838, Mount Hope Cemetery was America’s first municipal Victorian rural cemetery, with rolling hills, winding carriage roads, ornate monuments, and mature trees.
7. Cobbs Hill Park and Washington Grove
   Cobb’s Hill Reservoir offers an unobstructed view of Rochester’s skyline, while adjacent Washington Grove preserves a mature woodland just steps from nearby streets.
8. George Eastman Museum
   The historic estate of Kodak founder George Eastman brings together photography, cinema, technology, and horticulture.
9. Eastman Theatre
   Opened in 1922, Eastman Theatre was built by Kodak founder George Eastman as a venue for music, dance, and silent films with live orchestral accompaniment.
10. Memorial Art Gallery
    The Memorial Art Gallery, commonly called MAG, brings together five thousand years of art in a museum that feels inviting, walkable, and easy to explore at your own pace.
11. Rochester Museum & Science Center
    The Rochester Museum & Science Center—known simply as the RMSC—combines regional history, natural science, and hands-on experimentation.
12. The Strong National Museum of Play
    The Strong National Museum of Play explores play through toys, games, dolls, storybooks, and hands-on exhibits.
13. ARTISANworks
    ARTISANworks transforms a former industrial building into an art-filled creative space.
14. Edgerton Model Railroad Room
    Hidden within the Edgerton Community Center, the Edgerton Model Railroad Room preserves a detailed miniature of mid-century Rochester and rail-era Upstate New York.
15. Genesee Valley Park
    Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.
16. Riverie Boat Cruises
    A Riverie cruise offers a water-level perspective on the Genesee River and the Erie Canal as they pass through the city.
17. Maplewood Park
    Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., Maplewood Park follows the western rim of the Genesee River gorge.
18. Seneca Park and Seneca Park Zoo
    Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1893, Seneca Park spans nearly 300 acres along the eastern rim of the Genesee River gorge.
19. Turning Point Park
    Turning Point Park follows wetlands and former industrial land along the Genesee River.
20. Erie Canalway Trail
    Following the historic Erie Canal, the Erie Canalway Trail offers hundreds of miles of generally flat terrain for walking, running, and cycling across New York State.
21. Schoen Place
    Schoen Place sits on a historic stretch of the Erie Canal, where former grain mills, warehouses, and industrial buildings have been transformed into a canal-side destination for walking, dining, and shopping.
22. Colonial Belle Boat Tour
    Family-owned since 1989, the Colonial Belle is the largest tour boat on the Erie Canal.
23. Lollypop Farm
    Lollypop Farm, the Humane Society of Greater Rochester, combines an animal shelter with an unusual destination for a casual walk.
24. Wickham Farms
    Wickham Farms has grown from a family farm into a seasonal destination.
25. Corbett’s Glen Nature Park
    Tucked between an expressway and busy suburban roads, Corbett’s Glen Nature Park preserves 52 acres along Allen Creek.
26. Channing H. Philbrick Park
    Channing H. Philbrick Park follows Irondequoit Creek through a narrow wooded corridor, where bridges, boardwalks, and trails offer close access to a fast-moving stretch of the creek.
27. Ellison Park
    Established in 1926 as Monroe County’s first official park, Ellison Park spans 447 acres along Irondequoit Creek as it winds north toward Irondequoit Bay.
28. Lucien Morin Park
    Lucien Morin Park sits on a steep hillside overlooking Irondequoit Creek as it approaches Irondequoit Bay.
29. Powder Mills Park and Fish Hatchery
    Powder Mills Park features wooded trails, winding trout streams, and a historic fish hatchery set in a deep valley carved by Irondequoit Creek.
30. Mendon Ponds Park
    Mendon Ponds Park is Monroe County’s largest park, spanning 2,500 acres of woodlands, wetlands, ponds, and meadows.
31. New York Museum of Transportation
    Historic trolley cars, buses, subway equipment, and transportation artifacts fill this volunteer-driven museum dedicated to preserving the history of travel in Rochester and the Genesee Valley.
32. Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum
    The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum preserves the equipment, stories, and craftsmanship that helped build Western New York.
33. Genesee Country Village & Museum
    Genesee Country Village & Museum recreates a nineteenth-century community across more than 600 acres in the Genesee Valley.
34. Linwood Gardens
    Set above the Genesee Valley, Linwood Gardens is a private historic estate and home to a collection of tree peonies developed over decades of hybridization.
35. Mount Morris Dam
    Completed in 1952 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mount Morris Dam protects communities along 67 miles of the Genesee River Valley, including Rochester.
36. Letchworth State Park
    Letchworth State Park preserves more than seventeen miles of the Genesee River gorge, where steep rock walls, waterfalls, and wooded hillsides follow the river through the Genesee Valley.
37. Stony Brook State Park
    Stony Brook State Park centers on a narrow gorge where water has carved through layers of shale and limestone, forming waterfalls, cascades, and sculpted rock formations.

Lake Ontario

Follow the Lake Ontario shoreline west and east of Rochester for beaches, lighthouses, wildlife habitat, historic sites, and landscapes shaped by water and wind.

1. Ontario Beach Park
   Ontario Beach Park sits at the mouth of the Genesee River, where it enters Lake Ontario.
2. Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse
   Standing near the mouth of the Genesee River, the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse is one of the oldest surviving lighthouses on Lake Ontario and a visible reminder of Rochester’s connection to the Great Lakes.
3. The Hidden Sidewalk
   The Hidden Sidewalk is one of Rochester’s most unusual public walkways.
4. Seabreeze Amusement Park
   Seabreeze has welcomed visitors to the Lake Ontario shoreline since 1879, making it one of the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the United States.
5. Durand Eastman Park
   Durand Eastman Park protects nearly a thousand acres of steep glacial hills, wooded ravines, interior lakes, and the Lake Ontario shoreline.
6. Braddock Bay Wildlife Management Area
   Braddock Bay Wildlife Management Area protects thousands of acres of wetlands, ponds, marshes, woodlands, and shoreline along Lake Ontario’s southern edge.
7. Hamlin Beach State Park
   Hamlin Beach State Park extends along the Lake Ontario shoreline, offering sandy beaches and open-water views for more than a mile.
8. Holley Canal Falls
   Holley Canal Falls is one of the most unusual waterfalls along the Erie Canal corridor.
9. Cobblestone Museum
   Tucked into the historic hamlet of Childs, the Cobblestone Museum preserves one of Western New York’s most distinctive architectural traditions.
10. Medina Railroad Museum
    Housed in a massive 1905 New York Central Railroad freight depot, the Medina Railroad Museum preserves the transportation history that shaped New York.
11. Olcott Beach
    Olcott Beach sits at the mouth of Eighteen Mile Creek, where the harbor, marina, waterfront parks, and family attractions cluster along the shore.
12. Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse
    Standing on a rocky point along Lake Ontario, Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse has guided mariners since 1875.
13. Old Fort Niagara
    Standing at the mouth of the Niagara River, Old Fort Niagara sits at a strategically important location.
14. Chimney Bluffs State Park
    Towering earthen spires rise above Lake Ontario at Chimney Bluffs State Park, forming one of New York’s most distinctive coastal landscapes.
15. Sodus Bay Lighthouse Museum
    Perched on a bluff overlooking the entrance to Sodus Bay from Lake Ontario, the Sodus Bay Lighthouse Museum preserves the bay’s maritime history and its evolution into a shipping and recreational center.
16. Cracker Box Palace
    Cracker Box Palace at Alasa Farm combines farm animal rescue with nearly two centuries of agricultural history.
17. Sterling Nature Center
    Sterling Nature Center protects more than 1,400 acres along nearly two miles of Lake Ontario’s southern shore.
18. Fair Haven Beach State Park
    Fair Haven Beach State Park extends along the Lake Ontario shoreline and the protected harbor of Little Sodus Bay.
19. Fort Ontario State Historic Site
    Overlooking the mouth of the Oswego River, Fort Ontario guarded a transportation corridor linking Lake Ontario to New York’s interior.

Finger Lakes

Travel through canal villages, lakeside communities, gardens, museums, gorges, and waterfalls across the Finger Lakes and into Central New York.

1. Historic Palmyra Museums
   Historic Palmyra operates five museums, all within walking distance of one another, that explore the businesses, homes, and daily life of a nineteenth-century Erie Canal village.
2. Ganondagan State Historic Site
   Ganondagan preserves the site of a major seventeenth-century Seneca town that once housed thousands of Haudenosaunee (Hodinöhsö:ni), or People of the Longhouse.
3. Hemlock Lake Park
   Hemlock Lake offers a rare opportunity to experience a Finger Lake much as it appeared before extensive shoreline development transformed the region.
4. Sonnenberg Gardens & Mansion
   Sonnenberg Gardens & Mansion State Historic Park preserves the former summer estate of financier Frederick Ferris Thompson and philanthropist Mary Clark Thompson.
5. Canandaigua Lakefront and City Pier
   Canandaigua’s lakefront brings several popular food and beverage destinations together near City Pier and Kershaw Park.
6. Bristol Mountain
   Bristol Mountain offers year-round recreation in the hills south of Canandaigua.
7. Naples and Grimes Glen
   Naples lies in Bristol Valley, where commercial grape growing has shaped the village for more than 150 years.
8. Cumming Nature Center
   Cumming Nature Center encompasses 900 acres in the Bristol Hills.
9. Garrett Memorial Chapel
   Garrett Memorial Chapel is a Gothic-style granite building set on a secluded bluff overlooking Keuka Lake.
10. Keuka Outlet Trail
    The Keuka Outlet Trail follows the former Crooked Lake Canal and Fall Brook Railroad between Keuka Lake and Seneca Lake.
11. The Windmill Farm & Craft Market
    Every Saturday from late April through November, The Windmill Farm & Craft Market transforms a hillside just south of Penn Yan into a lively marketplace.
12. Glenn H. Curtiss Museum
    Historic wood-and-canvas airplanes hang from the ceiling at the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, named for the Hammondsport inventor.
13. Corning Museum of Glass
    The Corning Museum of Glass explores more than 3,500 years of human history through a material that is both practical and artistic.
14. Harris Hill Soaring
    Perched high above the Chemung River Valley, Harris Hill has been a center of American soaring since the 1930s.
15. Watkins Glen State Park
    Within two miles, Glen Creek descends nearly 400 feet through Watkins Glen, creating 19 waterfalls as it flows along a deep shale gorge.
16. Farm Sanctuary
    Farm Sanctuary provides care for rescued farm animals while inviting visitors to consider their lives within modern food systems.
17. Geneva Lakefront and Downtown
    Geneva pairs a lively downtown with sweeping views from the northern shore of Seneca Lake.
18. Finger Lakes Rail Experience
    Traveling aboard the Finger Lakes Rail Experience feels less like transportation and more like stepping into the golden age of rail travel.
19. Women’s Rights National Historical Park
    The Women’s Rights National Historical Park preserves the sites where one of the most influential reform movements in American history took shape.
20. Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge
    Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge protects an extensive wetland landscape at the northern end of Cayuga Lake, where marshes, open water, and cattail-lined channels provide year-round habitat for birds and other wildlife.
21. Auburn and Harriet Tubman
    Auburn had an established free Black community and an active network of abolitionists when Harriet Tubman chose it as her home in 1859.
22. Willard Memorial Chapel
    Willard Memorial Chapel preserves the only known chapel interior designed entirely by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.
23. Fillmore Glen State Park
    Fillmore Glen follows a narrow limestone gorge where waterfalls, stone bridges, and clear pools create an intimate Finger Lakes gorge experience.
24. Taughannock Falls State Park
    Taughannock Falls plunges 215 feet from the rim of a deep shale gorge, making it one of the tallest single-drop waterfalls east of the Rocky Mountains.
25. Cornell Botanic Gardens
    Cornell Botanic Gardens encompasses cultivated gardens, the 100-acre F. R. Newman Arboretum, and natural areas across Cornell University’s campus, including Beebe Lake.
26. Buttermilk Falls State Park
    Buttermilk Falls derives its name from the frothy white water tumbling over a series of layered rock ledges on its way to Cayuga Lake.
27. Robert H. Treman State Park
    For thousands of years, Enfield Creek has carved a deep gorge through the shale hills southwest of Ithaca, creating the waterfalls, pools, and narrow passages that define Robert H. Treman State Park.
28. Carpenter Falls
    Carpenter Falls drops 90 feet from a shelf of Tully Limestone into a deep, wooded gorge carved by Bear Swamp Creek.
29. Sycamore Hill Gardens
    Open by reservation from spring through fall, Sycamore Hill Gardens has transformed a former dairy farm into nearly 40 acres of ponds, formal gardens, woodland plantings, and artistic discoveries.
30. Skaneateles Village and Lakefront
    Skaneateles Village sits at the northern end of Skaneateles Lake, an unfiltered drinking-water source for Syracuse and several surrounding communities.
31. Great New York State Fair
    Founded in 1841, the Great New York State Fair is the nation’s oldest state fair.
32. Everson Museum of Art
    The Everson Museum of Art is as notable for its building as for the collection inside.
33. Green Lakes State Park
    Green Lakes State Park is known for the turquoise and emerald hues of its two glacial lakes.

Western New York

Continue west toward Niagara Falls, Buffalo, and the Southern Tier for art, architecture, history, natural areas, and expansive state parks.

1. Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge
   Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge is part of the Alabama Swamp Complex, a connected conservation landscape between Rochester and Buffalo that also includes the adjoining Oak Orchard and Tonawanda wildlife management areas.
2. Niagara Falls State Park
   Established in 1885, Niagara Falls State Park is the oldest state park in the United States and one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s landmark preservation efforts.
3. Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum
   North Tonawanda became a leader in the American carousel industry, with the Allan Herschell Company alone producing more than 3,000 hand-carved wooden carousels.
4. Eternal Flame Hiking Trail
   The Eternal Flame Trail leads to a natural gas flame behind a waterfall.
5. East Aurora and Roycroft Campus
   The Roycroft Campus preserves nine of the original 14 buildings built for the Arts and Crafts community founded in 1897 by writer and entrepreneur Elbert Hubbard.
6. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House
   Designed principally between 1903 and 1905 for Darwin D. and Isabelle Martin, the complex is one of the finest expressions of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie style.
7. Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park
   The Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park lets visitors explore three historic naval vessels.
8. Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens
   Modeled after England’s Crystal Palace, this Lord & Burnham conservatory opened in 1900, introducing a tropical landscape to Buffalo’s South Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
9. Buffalo AKG Art Museum
   The Buffalo AKG Art Museum houses one of the nation’s most significant collections of modern and contemporary art, spanning more than a century of artistic experimentation and innovation.
10. Penn Dixie Fossil Park
    Penn Dixie Fossil Park invites visitors to search for fossils in the remains of an ancient seafloor that covered Western New York about 380 million years ago.
11. Lily Dale Assembly
    Founded in 1879, Lily Dale is a small lakeside community dedicated to Spiritualism and widely regarded as the world’s largest center for the movement.
12. Moss Lake Preserve
    Moss Lake Preserve protects a 15-acre kettle lake and floating sphagnum bog designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973.
13. Griffis Sculpture Park
    Griffis Sculpture Park features more than 250 sculptures set across meadows, hillsides, forests, and ponds.
14. Rock City Park
    Rock City Park centers on towering boulders, narrow passageways, and stone corridors.
15. Allegany State Park
    Allegany State Park spans 65,000 acres of forests, lakes, roads, and trails organized around two primary developed areas.

Still deciding where to start? Choose one place close to home, follow a region through the book, or use the map to see which ideas fit naturally into the same day.

Which of these 104 day trips would you choose next?

I’d love to hear from you—please reach out and share your thoughts and experiences.