goodness yes! I even did that when I went to kansas. For a while my job was to monitor noise exposure in Boeing plants, so we went to several states doing just that. When I found out I was going to boring Kansas, I decided there had to be more... and since I had weekends free for adventure, I did research and ended up going to the Flint Hills one weekend, and on another, I met up with people who had collected arrowheads (and bought some)
you get a lot more out of a place if you know what to look for.