Night Cross Country to Salisbury/Wicomico

The evening of 9/19 was our cross country flight to Salisbury-Wicomico Regional Airport. I had completed all of the preflight planning and we readied the aircraft for the night flight. The weather was better than on our last cross country. The checkpoints I picked out were a little further apart that I should have had them. I thought that the fact that some of them were airports would make them stand out at night since they have a rotating White and Green beacon. We could also use the radios to activate the runway lights. Despite this the checkpoints, even the airports were hard to find at night. As we travelled along our route my instructor pointed out various landmarks that could be used for navigation. I also tuned in the Salisbury VOR and tracked the radial inbound to the airport. Little did I know that this counted as instrument time in my logbook. As we approached SBY we figured out that we needed to start descending and that we would soon have to contact the tower for landing clearance. After listening to the airport frequency we contacted the tower and advised of our position and our intentions to land. We were cleared for a touch and go. Since I didn't ask for one I was surprised, but my instructor said that the tower recognized our tail number and assumed it was a training flight. We came down to land and then flew the pattern once before departing back to Tipton. On the way back the weather was getting a little cloudy but still manageable. Our return to the airport allowed us to perform another landing and two more times in the pattern. Flying at night is beautiful but challenging. The landings are especially hard because you lose many of your visual queues. I hope that I will be able to keep night current when I get my license.