That sounds like my trips to the Midwest: squeezing in all the visits with as many folks as possible! I hope you get to see lots of friends. I experience that same time zone thing when I visit my sister in western Montana, just over into the next time zone. The evening light lasts so much longer there!
It's more family than friends now but there are still a few we get to see sometimes. In the end family is the most important anyways.
Most of our Midwestern relatives live close together, which simplifies that part of a visit. But we have friends scattered around elsewhere, so we don't always manage to catch up with everybody.
It's hard to catch everyone especially when we all have our own lives. We have a friend who we keep trying to meet up with the past years but it just doesn't work out each time.