Adventure is a very unique, individualized thing. It basically means something we do that’s out of our normal routine, but is actually exciting! That doesn’t mean it necessarily gets your adrenaline pumping every time or that it’s a risky behavior. Everyone’s adventures are completely different experiences!

An Uncustomary Babe asked me to write a list of 50 Everyday Adventures and I thought that was a great idea because one of the questions I get asked a lot is how I come up with so many ideas for my adventures. I think a good starting point is to recognize that every day has the opportunity for adventure. This summer in particular has been very adventure-filled because I’ve been with someone who is willing to seek out more, back track on your path, risk a long trek for something that could potentially not be worth it, and finds joy in small pleasures. Take some lessons from him… those are some seriously amazing traits to have when you go out on an adventure!

50 Everyday Adventures + Adventure Tips | Uncustomary

Things To Keep In Mind When Adventuring

1. Be open
2. Allow plans to change
3. Check out things that at face value don’t seem “worth it”
4. If something even slightly peaks your interest, TURN AROUND
5. Keep going until you’re tired; when you’re tired, stop
6. Move slowly, look up, look down, mind the details
7. Use all your senses; observe as much as you can
8. Document, document, document
9. Adventure often (daily if possible)
10. An adventure doesn’t require another person, a car, or even leaving your home

Places to adventure? Everywhere, seriously. Absolutely anywhere can be an adventure, even a seemingly boring shopping mall. But I know that’s not what you want. So here are some ideas…

Places To Adventure

1. City streets
2. Parks
3. Woods
4. Backyards
5. Abandoned buildings
6. Roadside attractions
7. Haunted places
8. Beaches
9. Museums
10. Libraries

A good adventurer is also prepared! Want to make adventuring a regular thing? Make yourself a tool kit so you’re ready for anything! (These supplies and the places to adventure are more for adventures related to outdoor wandering, exploring, etc. Remember not all adventuring requires you even leaving your house!)

Things To Put In An Adventure Tool Kit

1. Notebook + writing utensil
2. Camera (or other visual documentation technology)
3. Map
4. Containers for collecting
5. Magnifying glass
6. Sidewalk chalk
7. Tape
8. Walking stick
9. String
10. Bag to put it all in

And without further ado, here is a list of ideas for adventures you can try out! These can of course just be starting points. Some of my best adventures start out with an itinerary to do one particular thing and it goes off the rails and becomes an entirely new thing. Allow yourself to see what happens.

50 Everyday Adventures + Adventure Tips | Uncustomary

50 Everyday Adventures

1. Try to plan out as much as you can the night before, but from the time you wake up till you go to bed you can’t use communicative technology (so no phones, GPS, social media, etc.) Challenge yourself to go as analog as you can, and maybe even get lost and have to ask for directions!
2. Host a couchsurfer or go couchsurfing yourself for a night
3. Choose a color and only eat, drink, and wear that color for the entire day
4. Go to an authentic restaurant of a cuisine you’ve never tried and eat something you’ve never had before
5. Go Geocaching, a ready-made outdoor scavenger hunt already somewhere near you
6. Get temporary/wash-out hair color and give yourself a crazy makeover for the day
7. Walk through a graveyard (bonus points if it’s night and/or on a full moon) and call out “Is there anybody there?” and listen and look
8. Do something super weird in public (here are 50 ideas)
9. Get a tattoo
10. Visit a Hookah lounge with a small group of your friends and try out a bunch of different flavors
11. Go to a plant nursery and buy a bunch of flowers and plants to make a Faerie Garden (bonus points if you buy/build them some furniture)
12. Volunteer at an organization you’ve never been involved with before
13. Go skinny dipping (bonus points if it’s in a place you don’t have permission to be swimming in)
14. Cover yourself in temporary tattoos
15. Set up a table on the street with a sign that says “Ask Me Anything” and see what happens
16. Visit a metaphysical shop and touch all the crystals with your eyes closed and buy the one that feels like it has the most energy/speaks to you
17. Walk down the street with a friend totally normally, except you’re wearing an animal head mask
18. Plot an elaborate kindness prank for a friend
19. Fold one hundred origami stars (AKA “lucky stars”) after you write a wish on each piece of paper, put them in a jar, and place them on your altar
20. Look up The Wander Society and make wandering a part of your daily routine (leave symbols from their lexicon around town for other TWS members to find)
21. Get your aura photographed or have a past life regression hypnosis session
22. Buy giant rolls of paper big enough for human bodies to lay on, take them and a ton of drawing utensils to a park, roll them out, and encourage people to have their body outlines traced and let people doodle in and around them
23. Find a friend to go wig shopping with
24. Go on a guided walk, like a Graffiti Walk or a Ghost Tour (or make up your own!)
25. Make a silly protest sign and stand on a street corner to see if you can get cars to honk in support of you (See #UncustomaryHonk)

50 Everyday Adventures + Adventure Tips | Uncustomary




26. Set up a tent in your backyard and camp overnight (or actually go camping somewhere else; you should try hiking and camping in wild)
27. Set up a creativity group via Facebook with some local friends and spend the day coming up with resources, planning events, etc.
28. Buy a bunch of googly eyes in different shapes and spend all day inanimate objects with faces and adding googly eyes to them (it’s called Eyebombing!)
29. Find an area of your city where people seem to graffiti a lot, and try your hand at making a tag with spray paint!
30. Research estate sales happening near you and wake up early to explore as many as you can in one morning
31. Take yourself out on a solo date (here are 50 ideas)
32. Go around town writing positive messages/quotes in sidewalk chalk for people to read and smile at
33. Get a friend to play videographer and videotape you dancing all over town
34. Cut out these words (“left”, “right”, “look up”, “look down”, “investigate”, and “turn around”) onto a regular die, then go out for a walk and roll the dice at least at every intersection
35. Go somewhere to visit something natural that’s in season (traipse through sunflower fields, pick strawberries, buy a pumpkin)
36. Spend all day interviewing strangers on a specific topic
37. Research a haunted place/urban myth, go there (again bonus points for at night, a full moon, or Friday the 13th) and call out to see if anyone is there. Record everything and go over the audio later.
38. Go to the dump and collect interesting garbage that you can create art with
39. Purchase adorable postcards and stamps, go to a cafe, get yourself some lunch, then sit and write postcards to your friends and mail them off
40. Do some guerrilla art (here’s the 101 guide to getting started)
41. Go to a beach in the off-season and collect seashells or trash and organize it by color
42. Buy some kaleidoscope glasses and wear them while you explore a local museum
43. Have a Zine Day where you start a zine from scratch, fully finish it, make copies, and leave copies at local cafes and shops!
44. Carry a life-size cut-out around with you everywhere you go and document it on your Instagram (bonus points if you get a cut-out made of you)
45. Do some historic urban exploring (find something interesting that happened in your town a long time ago and go learn about it)
46. Uncover a mystery
47. Get a detailed map of your city, explore it street by street, and highlight the streets you’ve completed
48. Track animals in nature
49. Rent one a city bike or one of those Byrd scooters and explore the city with wheels that aren’t inside a car
50. Say “yes” to everything for an entire day

Here’s a video extra I recorded about Wandering, Exploring, and Living Loudly!

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Get Out Of Your Rut Cheat Sheet

How do you like to adventure?

Photos: Maura Housley