Events that are just a nice drive?

I have a feeling the motorcycle folks have this down.

Last week, I went on a rally-like car event that was:

1. Not competitive

2. Was guided by provided notes for hazards, turns, stops, and directions, and distances, but not timing. No map was provided.

3. Had trivia questions about scenery along the way.

4. Stopped at a cheese farm, a micro brewery, and a winery before finishing up at a restaurant.

5. Had beautiful scenery along tiny back roads.

I'd like to do more of these. The missus and I loved it. I don't want to do a Cannonball, or a TSD, and I don't want to risk my license. A nice day trip would beThe region that did this one only holds one or two such events a year. My Google-fu is weak on this topic.

I should add, I would be down if the competitive part were the trivia.

That sounds like fun. I don't have anything to contribute, but I hope you get more replies.

Edit: doesn't GRM host some tours like this?

Where are you located?  Our club puts on rallies like that. Sometimes, depending on the rallymaster, there is an optional TSD class. But that has waned in popularity and most of our rallies are more like scavenger hunt / trivia cruises that usually follow a nice route to a destination meal. 

We’re located in northern Delaware, and our rallies usually run through southeast PA and / or northeast MD. 

Pholadelphia region SCCA sometimes has rallies with a tour option as well. 

I think I remember seeing those called "gimmick rallys" in SCCA parlance, so that might be a searching point? 

Central Pennsylvania Region always did one around Halloween..

I also wish there wer more of these type of events. Ststic car shows stopped doing it for me a long time ago; if I am going to pay 25 dollars to park my car in a field so that people can walk in for free to see it, I would rather go for a drive.

Funny story...Back in the day, I accidentally ended up being the president of the Autosport Club at my University. Our events were mainly  TSD and Autocross. But once a year, to end the season we would have a rally where at the checkpoints the navigator had to cut cards with the checkpoint. If the navigator drew high card, he had to drink one beer before going back to the car, if he drew low, he had to drink two. Driver sat in the car. Different world.

Pete

A local british car group used to do a scavenger hunt - rally thing back in the day that sounded a lot like what you did. Pretty sure GPS was verboten (coudl you even enforce that these days, with one on every phone). Sounded like a lot of fun, wish I had gotten to do one. 

We used to have gimmick rallies with British car clubs in eastern Virginia, back in the day. So did some non-British car clubs. Our local sports car club (that focuses on autocrossing) also had gimmick rallies. The most popular was the Saturday night closest to Halloween. That was lot of fun, as a participant and a rally master.

irish44j said:

A local british car group used to do a scavenger hunt - rally thing back in the day that sounded a lot like what you did. Pretty sure GPS was verboten (coudl you even enforce that these days, with one on every phone). Sounded like a lot of fun, wish I had gotten to do one. 

"Back in the day" GPS had not been invented Gimmick rallies and short evening TSD rallies were very common in the Metro NY area prior to the big gas "crisis" of the early 1970s. Also "Hare & Hound" type where low mileage is the winner. 

About 10 years ago I took part in some of these TSD rallyes with friends. It was hosted by a local club (not sure they are active anymore as their website shows the latest news in 2016). There were winter and summer events. Most of the times the events were held at night and the roads used were pretty much desert. The course was split up in 10 stages or so, you would get a few pages of notes at the beginning telling you where to turn and such. All along the course, there were 5-6 guys in cars randomly parked and you would have to stop to get them to punch a card. They ran the course prior to the "race" at 80% of the posted speed limit. They would record their own time at the checkpoints and you had to match that. One minute off the official time meant one point. The one team with the least points won. It was great fun. The rallies could last up to 3 hours, it became an endurance thing because at the end you would be very tired. The difficulty was to find all those unmarked roads you had to use. Sometimes you'd get lost and would have to find your way back or abandon the race. This was all before smartphones and google maps. Sometimes we used GPS, it became much easier.

We did this recently in the Supercoupe club. Attendance at our annual car show/drag race kept falling, to the point that the organizers decided it wasn't worth the time anymore. The last two years we've done a driving tour--this year we went through the Blue Ridge Parkway down to Savannah over three days.  It was a lot of fun.

Wondering why nobody has mentioned the GRM organized orange blossom and smoky mountain tours?  Seems like what OP is looking for

Drive Florida is a specific group that does mapped and planned drives.  Might check them out and contact them to scale the concept to your region.

Here's my write up of the Freedom Road Rally that we did earlier this year.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/trips-adventures-and-get-togethers/mr-mrs-gpz11-do-the-freedom-road-rally/154154/page1/

Thanks for all the good suggestions! I'm going to look into each, particularly the co driver drinking game. I'm in Chicago, if it matters.

Hah, I’m out in Aurora.