so this weekend brad, clint and i headed up to oregon to play a little golf at bandon dunes.. bandon dunes is way up in the southwest corner of oregon, so we decided to drive (since i love road trips).
according to Y! maps, the trip should take 7 hours, 8 minutes — not bad — but, according to mapquest, the trip should take 8 hours, 53 minutes. Odd. The difference is that Y! has us taking the 101 the whole way (463 miles), while mapquest takes us on the 5 (533.21 miles)… here’s the weird part.. Y! wants us to drive an average of 66 mph — whereas mapquest has us travelling 533.21 iles at an average speed of around 59 mph.. an *average* of 66 mph? the whole way on the 101?? sure, sounds reasonable enough, until you factor in a) traffic (ok.. that’s not fair) b) we’re driving in the dark (ok.. that’s not fair either) c) crazy winding roads on the side of the ocean (ok.. that’s fair). in any case.. the drive up there took about 11 hours (ack).. and then on the way back instead of driving the 5 back, we opted for the 101 again since we wanted to see the pretty ocean (which, incidentally is much prettier during the daytime than in the dead of a moonless night).
Enough driving talk… on to the golf. we played 2 and 7/18ths courses this weekend. Saturday morning, we played Bandon Dunes — magnificent course, incredibly difficult, especially the greens, which were SUPER fast. I putted right off the green many, many frustrating times (in one case, the ball rolled off the green into a bunker).
just as we finished and walked into the pro shop, someone called and cancelled their tee time at bandon trails.. bandon trails is the new course they’re building up there and isn’t even done yet. they had 7 holes open for preview play… so we jumped on the opportunity. AND we even got a free hat!!! w00t! bandon trails was pretty awesome too — most of the holes seemed unreal — they’re really trying to not change the landscape too much — it felt like we were just hiking in the woods.
sunday we played pacific dunes, which was my favorite of the three… pacific runs along the ocean for many of the holes, and was much more scenic than the other two, though tough as well…
so.. this weekend was my first time playing with a caddie.. i must say, it’s pretty cool to have a bunch of people walking around with you as you play golf. granted, you pay for it and stuff, but it’s just neat having the entourage with you on the course. very very very cool, actually. i could get used to it.
ok.. well, take a look at the pics and see for yourself why i <heart> oregon.
