Date Night Adventures
by Jane Ivey
“Left or right?”
“Right.”
“Left or right?”
“Left.”
“What time is it?”
“6:30.”
“How far away tonight?”
“No more than an hour.”
After planning a few date nights myself in the past that turned into more of a chore with underwhelming results in 2016, this is the date night route my husband, Tim, and I chose to take. We have always enjoyed spending time together and after being married for 45 years, raising our beautiful family, being active in our grandchildren’s lives, and running our own business, we decided it was time for yet another adventure refocusing on the two of us spending uninterrupted, quality time together. How it came about was quite by accident. We had planned to have dinner at a restaurant about 30 minutes outside of town, only to discover that it was closed for vacation. Unable to find any other local restaurants open past five o’clock left us with two options–head toward home or keep driving. We chose the second option. We decided to stop in a small town with only two local restaurants open for dinner. Our choice for the evening was a unique diner that has been in operation since 1961.
The experience was so fun we decided not planning would be the new standard for date night with a few rules to make it more of an adventure–back roads are the preferred routes, the smaller the town the better, and the destination choice is determined by our impromptu turn choices made at traffic lights or stop signs along with the travel time we allot ourselves.
Many of our trips have been surprising as well as beneficial. We have discovered everything from an Italian restaurant with live entertainment connected to a gas station, to a fine dining steak house with a beautiful view located in a rural farming area. We have visited interesting and historical small towns from Clinton to Edgefield with some comparatively larger ones thrown in between. We’ve enjoyed talking with servers, restaurant owners and local patrons, who often share their first-hand perspective of small-town life. What’s more, these mini road trips down rural highways are free from the demands of work and home, lending themselves to uninterrupted and often meaningful conversations between us.
We highly recommend no-plan date nights! Are you up for the adventure? Where will you end up? It all depends on how you answer the question “Left or right?”.
