Today was our first day back golfing since getting home from all of our travels. Starting over at golf is always a humbling experience, at least when you are us!
We drove to Fort Mohave with Sam and Sharyn to play at Huukan. We've never played here before, so we're super excited! We always love playing a new course.
Huukan is a pretty typical community golf course. As usual we has a great time playing with Sam and Sharyn even though our Steve and my games had some rocky parts!
We had such a good time today. It was great to be back on the golf course. It wasn't as humbling as we expected, so that was a great feeling! The weather was great, and we were spending time with good friends. What could be better?
We'll definitely have to keep this course in mind. Only about 45 minutes away, $18 a round including a golf cart with gps, and lots of fun!
We are camping with the side by side club in Williams, Arizona, and decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather up here to play some golf. Night time temps are in the 50's and day time in the 80's. What a treat from the heat of Lake Havasu!
Elephant Rocks is a beautiful mountain course that we had never played before, so we made a tee time with Sam and Sharyn.
There are beautiful gray squirrels up here!
This course is amazing! The grass is so nice and squishy. I love it!
This is one of the par threes, you have to make it over the water, and then the rock wall too.
Everyone of us struggled on this hole except for Steve, and look at his drive. About four feet from the pin. He called it a lucky shot!
Three deer greeted us on one of the holes, and then ran off into the trees to relax.
This is the 18th hole, a beautiful down hill drive back to the club house.
I would love to play this course again. Beautiful tee boxes, fairways and greens and the weather couldn't be better this time of year.
When we finished our golf game, we all headed into town for lunch at this little comfort food restaurant.
What a great day! I can't believe that in all our years of coming to Havasu that we have never taken the time to visit Williams. This little town is great!
We're back to the heat of Havasu, which means lots of preparation for a game of golf. Lots of water, cooling towels, sunscreen, a hat and a cart are all necessities in Havasu in June. But none the less, we still love golfing, hot or not.
Today we went out to play at 8:40. We like to play a little later than most to avoid the crowds, and the heat really doesn't bother us. We've been playing this crazy game for 13 months now, and although we feel like we are getting better, we (or maybe I should say I because Steve is pretty good) rarely get rewarded with a par and never a birdie. But today was a really big day for me. I got my first birdie on a par 4, which means for you non-golfers that I got the ball in with three hits!
As much as we hate this game sometimes, it sure is rewarding when we play well!
We woke this morning to the sound of waves crashing outside our bedroom window. It is so peaceful here! We lounged around outside the motor home enjoying our coffee, our breakfast, and our friends. Our camp faces the beach, and is the perfect place to hang out, we love it!
When the tide is out, it is way out!
Eventually the boys fund the energy and took a trip to town, converted some dollars to pesos, and toured around. We girls stayed back, walked the dogs and did some beach combing.
Then Tony and Joyce and the two of us made our way out to the Vidanta Golf course to play a round of golf.
We played this course last June, when Steve and I had only been playing golf for about a month, so it was really difficult for us at that point. So we went out today with an open mind, wondering if it would be any easier, and what we would think of the course this year.
When we got there, we received the same great service that we had last year, and once again, we were the only people around. It is amazing to me that we can play this beautiful course and be the only ones out here.
We were immediately greeted by Jose, who helped us get our clubs into our carts, and made sure we had everything we needed before we took off.
The view from the pro shop and restaurant.
The driving range.
The pro shop and restaurant.
Then off we went to tackle this very beautiful, difficult course. This is Joyce showing off her great drive.
Look, we're still smiling, despite the abuse this course has given us.
Once again, we thought this is the most magnificent golf course we have ever played. It is so beautiful looking out over the Sea of Cortez.
But we quickly realized that it is still really difficult and long, even with a year of playing under our belts. The terrain is uneven, with so many sand bunkers and so much desert all around, but also so much fun! It takes at least an hour longer to play than our course at home.
One of the holes has a colony of zebra tailed lizards nearby. If they feel threatened, they curl their tail up like a scorpion, and run. The underneath of their tail is striped like a zebra.
Oh, these views!
When we were finished with our 18 holes, Jose was waiting for us and cleaned our clubs before returning them to the jeep. We really enjoyed talking to him. He is such a nice guy!
He told us that minimum wage in Mexico is $5 per day (plus tips) if you are in an industry that makes tips, and $8 per day if you don’t make tips. That is a wage that we Americans can't even image. He has a wife and son, and he was looking forward to his day off tomorrow so he could take his wife and son fishing in Cholla Bay. He fishes for a few different kinds of fish that they will hopefully enjoy for dinner. Such a treat to meet such nice people in this town.
When we got back to camp, six of us decided to head to town for dinner, and Tony and Joyce stayed behind and cooked at camp. We went to one of our favorite little restaurants, and as soon as we walked in the door, they turned down the music for us (the locals like it loud), and we picked a nice table out on the deck. It was a bit hot at first, but once the sun started to set, it was gorgeous! Four of us had the whole fried fish and two had chicken tacos. Jerry and Mary also ordered some ceviche to go, so hopefully that will be good for them later.
The humidity has been rising all day, and as we were driving home, we couldn’t get the windows to clear, even with the defrost on. So when we got back to camp Steve looked up the current humidity in Puerto Penasco and it was 84%. No wonder everything is soaking wet! In Havasu we are used to the humidity being about 15% with our skin parched and dry, and here our skin is just soaking up the moisture. By tomorrow morning I should look about 15 years younger! I love this place!
When we got back to camp we enjoyed a nice evening on the front porch eating apple and cherry crisp that Mary made, and brownies that Larry brought, listening to the waves crash on the beach. Very similar to the way we started our morning, except with a little more sugar. Oh so nice. It’s hard to beat this for a $29 a day camp site.
It's Memorial Day weekend, and for us that means staying away from the craziness of the lake and enjoying our sanity. So today we headed west to Needles, CA for a little golf with friends. Needles is a small town just across the California border. We've never been to this course before, but were excited to give it a try.
They had a Memorial Weekend Special of $90 for a foursome. So off we went for a fun day of golfing. The course was pretty open, and didn't seem that challenging, but there were a few obstacles like these HUGE salt cedar trees. And of course, I was the one that got to go exploring in them.
This was the only section of the course that was lined with houses. It was a nice relief to not have houses on every hole.
When we finished our round of golf we stopped at a little Thai restaurant in Needles.
It was the tiniest place, and had just a single woman working as a server, cook and bus girl. Her Tom Kah soup was amazing! It had all of the authentic ingredients and was really good. Five Stars! The rest of the food was fine, but not as great as the Tom Kah.
Steve and Sam in anticipation.
This was the perfect way to get away from the mayhem of the lake and still have a great day out enjoying the weather! We love golfing with Sam and Sharyn!
