Everything We Swore We'd Never Do — And Why Those Ended Up Being Our Favorite Memories

There was a version of us that had very strong opinions about what was worth doing. Weekend trips had to involve something photogenic. Activities had to feel exciting before we even started. If something sounded even remotely dull on paper, we'd skip it without a second thought and move on to whatever looked better on Instagram.

We were, in hindsight, kind of insufferable about it.

The shift didn't happen all at once. It crept up on us slowly — through a rainy afternoon with nothing else to do, through a friend's offhand suggestion we almost ignored, through one of us dragging the other somewhere they absolutely did not want to go. And somewhere in all of that reluctant participation, we stumbled into some of the best experiences we've ever had together.

This is about those experiences. The unglamorous ones. The ones that never made the highlight reel but somehow never left us.

The Museum We Almost Skipped Three Times

We were in a mid-sized city in the Midwest — the kind of place that doesn't usually make travel lists — and we'd already done everything on our actual itinerary by noon. Benny pulled up a map and found a small natural history museum two blocks from our hotel. It looked fine. Totally unremarkable. The kind of place you'd walk past a hundred times without going in.

Katie said no. Then said maybe. Then said fine, but only for an hour.

Three hours later, we were the last people in the building and the staff was very politely hinting that it was time to leave. There was a whole wing dedicated to local geological history that somehow turned into a two-person debate about plate tectonics neither of us was remotely qualified to have. We bought magnets from the gift shop. We still talk about that museum.

The thing nobody tells you about small local museums is that they're full of people who care deeply — curators and volunteers who know everything about one very specific thing and are thrilled to share it with anyone who slows down long enough to ask. That energy is contagious in a way that big, famous attractions rarely are.

The Hike That Was Supposed to Be Terrible

Benny is the outdoorsy one. Katie is the person who agreed to marry someone outdoorsy and has been quietly renegotiating the terms ever since.

So when Benny suggested a trail that was described online as 'moderate with some elevation gain' — which everyone who hikes knows is code for 'bring your will' — Katie's enthusiasm was approximately zero. The compromise was breakfast at a good diner first and full veto power over any future hikes rated above 'easy.'

The trail was hard. There were parts where Katie stopped, looked back down the mountain, and genuinely reconsidered her life choices. But there was also a moment, about two-thirds of the way up, where the trees opened and we could see for what felt like fifty miles in every direction, and the world got very quiet, and neither of us said anything for a while.

That's the thing about physical discomfort — it has a way of stripping everything else away. You stop thinking about your inbox. You stop rehearsing conversations. You're just there, breathing hard, looking at something enormous and beautiful, and it's almost impossible not to feel something real.

Katie has since completed four more hikes she didn't want to do. She complains the entire way up and admits it was worth it at the top every single time.

The Hobby That Made Us Genuinely Weird at Parties

For about six months, we got really into fermentation. Like, aggressively into it. The kind of into it where you name your sourdough starter and feel genuine concern when it doesn't look right.

This started because a neighbor gave us a jar of kombucha SCOBY and neither of us wanted to be rude. We kept it alive out of obligation. Then we started actually reading about it. Then we bought a crock for fermenting vegetables. Then we had a full shelf in the kitchen dedicated to things quietly bubbling in jars.

It sounds deeply unsexy as a hobby. It is deeply unsexy as a hobby. And yet — it became this slow, patient ritual that we both genuinely looked forward to. There's something grounding about a process that doesn't care about your schedule, that requires you to just check in and tend to something and wait. In a life that moves pretty fast, a jar of kimchi that needs another four days is oddly comforting.

We've since introduced at least six people to sourdough starters they didn't ask for. We are that couple now and we've made our peace with it.

What We Actually Learned From All of This

The pattern, when we look back at it, is pretty consistent: the things we resisted usually required us to slow down, to be a little uncomfortable, or to look genuinely uncool. And those are exactly the conditions under which something real tends to happen.

When we're chasing the version of an experience we've already seen somewhere — the perfect viewpoint, the trendy restaurant, the thing everyone says you have to do — we're kind of just executing a plan someone else made. There's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't leave a lot of room for surprise.

The boring bucket list items, the ones that made us hesitate or roll our eyes, those came with no expectations. And no expectations meant we could actually be present for whatever showed up.

The List We're Still Adding To

We've started keeping a running note on our phones — things we'd normally skip that we're committing to try at least once. County fairs. Historic cemeteries (genuinely fascinating, it turns out). Small-town diners that look like they haven't changed since 1987. Community theater. Guided tours we'd normally consider beneath us.

Not every one of them has been a revelation. Some of them were exactly as underwhelming as we expected. But even those gave us something — a shared laugh, a story, a reminder that we're pretty good at making the most of whatever we end up in front of.

That feels like enough. Actually, most days it feels like more than enough.

If you've got a 'boring' thing you keep almost doing and then talking yourself out of — maybe go do it. Worst case, you've got a funny story. Best case, you end up being the last people in the building while a very enthusiastic curator explains the entire geological history of a place you almost didn't visit.

We highly recommend it.