Date night was so much fun last night!
But first, I have to tell you about something completely insane.
Right around 3:30 p.m. yesterday, Ryan and I took Sadie to our favorite hiking trail for a quick three-mile hike.
About halfway through our hike, we heard some rustling off the path. It sounded like a herd of deer, so we instantly became excited and watched as Sadie stopped and pointed at the noise.
“What is it?” we asked her, getting her pumped up.
Sadie is a hunting dog by nature and watching her “in action” is seriously one of the coolest things because her tail gets rigid and she stalks her “prey” until she sprints after it like a mad dog.
Well, when she took off sprinting after the noise, I saw movement in the brush and called out to Ryan saying, “Watch out, I think the deer may run up the path.”
With that, we saw a BLACK BEAR appear on the path! It spotted us immediately and kept running, across the path and away from us.
(That is not my picture. I’m not crazy enough to stop to take a picture, but that’s exactly what it looked like!)
We screamed, “Oh my God, it’s a BEAR,” followed by, “NO!!! SADIE! NO!”
Sadie appeared on the path immediately and stopped running, trotting toward us like nothing crazy just happened.
We’re pretty positive she was just chasing sound and never actually saw the bear, but it was still pretty scary.
I was sweating like crazy and my heart was racing as we took off in the opposite direction of the bear.
It is still insane to me that we saw a bear since the trails are pretty popular and we saw a bunch of other people on our hike. There are a plethora of campsites near by and signs cautioning of bears, but I honestly never thought we’d see one ourselves.
Thankfully the bear could not have been less interested in us and Sadie and appeared scared by our noise and Sadie running through the brush. The feeling was mutual there, buddy.
Date Night
Date night is going to seem rather dull compared to our adventures with a black bear, but it was really fun!
When we returned from our hike, we quickly changed before heading out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.
I felt quite overdressed for the restaurant, but our plans following dinner took us somewhere nice!
Ryan and I have been meaning to try El Toreo after we heard great things about it.
We immediately knew it was going to be a good meal when the chips and salsa were on point.
I love thin, crispy tortilla chips and homemade salsa. We had no problem demolishing all of the chips and salsa before our entrees arrived.
I opted for the taco chicken salad which was a great choice.
When it came out, I was confused because I didn’t see any chicken, but there was a ton of chicken hidden under the lettuce… a TON.
I feel like there was maybe a handful of lettuce in the salad and the rest of the bowl was chicken. Ryan was quite jealous.
It was a great salad!
Obviously.
After dinner, it was time for our first Ocala theater show!
We headed to the Ocala Civic Theatre to see “Rumors,” a hysterical show all about rumors and embellishment.
Ryan and I both thought the show was so, so funny and really well done and hope to see a lot more shows at the Ocala Civic Theatre in the future.
A date night success!
P.S. The Fashion page was updated!
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First of all; A BEAR?!
Second of all: You looked lovely for your date night!
That almost sounds unbelievable! I don’t ever think of bears in Florida for some reason. Insane! Glad it wasn’t interested in you guys or Sadie!
Hey Julie,
I’ve been following your blog for awhile. I initially was interested in reading about your workouts and delicious recipes, but once I found out that you live in Ocala, I was hooked.
I grew up in Ocala and am currently in North Carolina for college. It is so strange to read about someone exploring the city that you grew up in, a city that most people have never heard of. I’ve never commented before, but this one, I had to.
I do tons of theater, musical theater and straight shows. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve performed at OCT (I did my first production there when I was four years old!), and it is SO SO SO cool to see you and Ryan at the theatre, hanging out with all the old farts (the average audience member is like 100 years old hahaha). Anyway, definitely keep going to see shows. OCT does some of the best community work I’ve ever seen and been a part of.
Also, I played Claire in Rumors during high school… I went to the IB program at Vanguard (Send your future gorgeous children there!!!).
A couple more things. El Toreo is good, but you guys definitely need to check out Latinos y Mas. My friends and I used to go there like once a week during high school!!! We love it. 🙂
Finally, have you guys been down to The Villages yet?? Either square is great for a date night, because they have live music every night, and it is SO fun to go dancing with the old people on the square. 🙂 Plus, their movie theaters are really nice! My favorite square is Lake Sumter Landing, but Spanish Springs is great, too!
Becca
i LOVE this comment! so cool that you are originally from ocala and were involved in the theatre. it was such a great show and ryan and i cannot wait to see more! we were so impressed! and we’ll definitely check out latinos y mas! i’ll take any excuse to go out for mexican food again! 😀 and we NEED to check out the villages! i went there one time for a work-related opportunity, but would love to go and explore.
My mom once let our our family’s three dogs to stop their insistent barking. She figured they wanted to go chase squirrels in the yard. She followed them outside and they had treed a black bear right next to the house! To this day, she swears when she found them they all looked at her with huge eyes that said, “MOM, that is the BIGGEST SQUIRREL we have ever seen!”
Is the place you hike an off-leash area for dogs? I have a dog myself and understand how hard it is to keep them on-leash when they want to romp and play, but if something happened to my dog because I let him off-leash in an undesignated area I’d die. A lady here in San Francisco had her dog illegally off-leash in Golden Gate Park this week, and her dog chased a baby bison and the bison ended up dying (they think it ran into an electric fence to get away from the dog). I’d be so scared to let my dog off leash somewhere there are bears!
Whoa a bear?! Crazy!!
Fun date night!
My fiance and I have been doing a date night on Saturday nights for the past few months and they’re so special… In or out, dinner or movie… Mexican is one of our fave places to go out to!
I can’t believe you saw a bear! How scary! And..that Mexican food looks so good! It makes me want it for dinner tonight!
where was your dress from? loved it!
thank you! it’s actually a skirt + tank top. all the info is here: https://www.pbfingers.com/2012/01/08/dressin-up-for-date-night/
Love, love, love your outfit!!
OMG A BEAR?! I die. Hope you had that bear mace with you just in case!
Your skirt is perfect!
When it is your turn to plan date night, do you keep the activity a surprise? Or do you tell each other ahead of time what you are going to do?
it depends! we usually tell each other though because i don’t particularly love surprises and i also can’t keep my own surprises a secret for too long!
Did you ever go to see the Arabian Nights dinner show when in Orlando? We always wanted to stop to see it but thought it might be pretty crowded. Maybe next time we get down. Oh and did you see the new Holy Land Experience that opened recently? Last time we were down, we didn’t have time to go. Hope to do that also.
we didn’t really care for arabian nights, actually. i’ve always wanted to go to holy land experience!
guess what – i was once IN a production of Rumors! So was Megan, the recent addition to THS!!!
This is really late, but I love this post! I played Chris Gorman in high school!