US Republican presidential candidate John McCain is to campaign in Colorado, as he seeks to take advantage of his rival's brief absence from the trail.
Barack Obama has halted campaigning to see his ill grandmother in Hawaii. His wife will replace him at an Ohio rally.
Some polls show the Democrat's lead narrowing in key battleground states.
Meanwhile, Mr McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is to give a deposition to a second inquiry into her alleged abuse of power as governor of Alaska.
It comes as two leading Republicans announced they had chosen to endorse Mr Obama rather than their party's own candidate.
They are former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan and Republican Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson.
The news, only days after former Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his endorsement to the Democratic candidate, may dent Mr McCain's efforts to seize back the initiative, correspondents say.
Ethics questions
Mrs Palin will take a break from campaigning in Pennsylvania and Missouri on Friday to give her deposition to the Alaska Personnel Board investigation.
 Mrs Palin rejected the first ethics inquiry as politically motivated |
The governor is accused of violating ethics rules when she fired the state's top law enforcement official, Walt Monegan, allegedly because he refused to sack her former brother-in-law, a state trooper.
A lawyer for Mrs Palin said she would speak to the independent lawyer leading the inquiry - which was requested by herself - in an interview expected to last up to three hours.
Her husband, Todd, will also give a deposition to the lawyer, Timothy Petumenos.
An initial investigation by Alaska's state legislature found Mrs Palin had the authority to remove Mr Monegan from his post but had breached ethics laws in seeking to have her ex-brother-in-law fired.
The McCain-Palin campaign dismissed it as politically motivated.
Campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said the second inquiry was one Mrs Palin had requested "to make sure the facts were out there on this".
Tax attacks
Mr McCain spent Thursday campaigning in the key I-4 corridor in central Florida, travelling from the Atlantic coast to Sarasota on the Gulf of Mexico.
 Mr Obama will return to the campaign trail on Saturday |
He has been stepping up his attacks on Mr Obama as a tax-and-spend Democrat who wants to share the wealth.
"He's more concerned about using taxes to spread the wealth than creating a tax plan that creates jobs and grows our economy," Senator McCain told a cheering crowd at an Ormond Beach, Florida.
Mrs Palin, campaigning in Ohio, struck a similar theme.
Mr Obama held a rally in Indianapolis on Thursday before embarking on the 11-hour flight to Hawaii to visit his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham.
Speaking to US TV network CBS, he said he regretted not having seen his mother before she died of cancer and wanted "to make sure that I don't make the same mistake twice".
He also criticised the McCain campaign for using what he said were smear tactics against him.
The Illinois senator will return to the campaign trail on Saturday.
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