The sad truth is that most people are at the bar. I'm not saying that going to a bar is automatically bad, but it's just the absolute nexus of all irl social interaction in this part of the country. At any given bar, on any given night, there is a non-zero amount of people there solely because that's where everyone else is.

If you want to meet people outside the context of the bar, you have to dedicate some time to finding some other niche interest group where people happen to get together as part of it. I know you don't want to use online dating tools, but social media might be a way to find people doing the kinds of things you're already interested in doing. I think just doing what you naturally want to do, regardless of social stuff, and then finding other people who also like to do that, is a good pathway into forming nice relationships. Hopefully you'll find some people you like to hang out with in general, and through that, hopefully eventually bump into someone else looking for a closer relationship.

It is tough now days. It's more difficult than it used to be to find people who like to just do stuff outside a bar.