Disc Golf Adventures - Tradewinds Park

Last Friday we played our first of two new disc golf courses: Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek in south Florida. It was a gorgeous morning - mid-fifties and sunny with a strong wind, which makes for a fun game.

This is a beautiful park. You can see the lake from the first tee pad!

Luckily that strong wind helped keep us from losing 

our discs in the lake - several of the holes followed the shoreline.

Can you see the basket for this hole? It's to the right

of the three palm trees, out on a little peninsula.

Seriously, it was so lucky that we didn't lose any discs!

Not every hole was a chance to send your disc for a swim.

The park is well cared for; all the grass is mowed

and there wasn't too much brush for your disc to hide in.

Some of the goals were in interesting spots, like this one,

tucked in a little clearing behind tall and short palm trees.

And this one, behind a tree that fell long ago.

(T had fun climbing over it.)

We played all 18 holes and would definitely recommend the park. The course was well-marked and easy to navigate. 

Tradewinds Park

3600 W Sample Rd
Coconut Creek, FL 33066

http://www.broward.org/parks/tradewindspark/Pages/Default.aspx 

Disc Golf Year in Review 2013

T at hole 18 at Tom Brown Park. This is his favorite -
when there's a "moat" around the basket. December 10, 2013

Thomas and I had a great year of disc golf, playing nearly every day. My Garmin records show that we played 269 times in 2013. I don't always have my watch with me so this is a low estimate. (FYI Garmin is my running watch that tracks distance, pace, etc. I wear it during disc golf so I'll know how far we've gone.) Weekday mornings T and I play on our own before school and usually also on weekends. On those 269 disc golf excursions, we covered 312 miles over 196 hours (not counting travel time!).

One of Thomas' goals for this year was to play disc golf in new states (we already had Florida, Ohio, and Kentucky checked off). We ended up playing in two new states in 2013 and on four new courses! In March, we played MacIntyre Park for the first time, in Thomasville, Georgia (I blogged about that here.) In June, we stopped on our way to Ohio and played in Knoxville, Tennessee at Victor Ashe Park. We thought this was a great idea based on this video:


In reality, the disc golf course was not in great shape - mostly it could have used a good mowing... or perhaps a good pass from a hay baler! On some of the fairways the grass was knee to hip high, which made it hard to find your disc. The scenery was picturesque though and the other disc golfers were kind and helped us when we couldn't find the next hole on our own. Eventually we got frustrated enough to quit, but first we played a good dozen holes, and crossed Tennessee off our list!

In addition to hitting our favorite course at Lake Shore Park in Ashtabula, we also played two new courses in Ohio: Glacier Ridge Metro Park in Plain City (near Dublin, outside Columbus), and Veterans Memorial Park in Parma.

Disc Golf in Parma

Glacier Ridge is a challenging course, not because of distance but because the open field fairways are really narrow with tall grass and brush in the rough. It's not the best course to use to introduce friends to the sport, but not knowing that, we took Dawn and her family out to shoot a few holes. The first few are in the woods and beautiful - no brush, open fairways, fully shaded. Definitely playable for all levels. Once out in the fields, though, we spent more time looking for discs than throwing them. It was still fun and good exercise and we appreciated the Petrills being troopers and trying something new!

The course at Veterans Memorial Park in Parma is a fun one. It's well-marked, hilly (not extremely so), wooded but mostly clear of brush. My brother, John, joined us in September and we played the back nine together. The highlight for T was seeing a couple of deer! We really enjoyed this course and will be back for sure.

While we love adventures, we continue to play the majority of our disc golf at our "home course" at Tom Brown Park. Once a week we visit Jack McLean Park (usually on Sundays) and occasionally we drive up to Thomasville and play the 12-hole course at MacIntyre Park. What will 2014 bring? Time will tell but we look forward to more disc golfing fun!

Disc Golf Adventures - MacIntyre Park

Monday morning of Spring Break, T and I drove up to Thomasville, Georgia to check out the disc golf course at MacIntyre Park. The well-manicured course has twelve holes and features a creek that comes into play many times. We picked the right time of year to visit as the azaleas were all in bloom, but it would also be nice in the summer as there are many big shade trees.

The first hole (first photo) is under a gorgeous live oak tree near the corner of Washington and Mitchell Streets.

The holes are well-marked, have concrete tee pads and most have benches nearby. The park also has picnic pavilions and a playground. In the photo below you can see the creek and some of the azaleas. A few of our discs made it into the creek (Kite floats but Champion Eagle sinks!) but it was not hard to retrieve them. The water is not deep nor is the creek wide, except in a few spots. 

The course has great signs at each tee pad with aerial views of the hole and its target as well as directions to get to the next hole (see upper left quadrant of graphic). The older signs - see the blue sign with the yellow 2 peeking out from behind the new sign? - are from an older version of the course and can be a little confusing. Luckily the first two line up fairly well with the current fairways. 

We enjoyed this course - the creek really added to the difficulty and challenge - and it's always fun to play in a new location. We recommend it!

MacIntyre Park Disc Golf

201 North Mitchell Street

Thomasville, GA 31792

http://www.pdga.com/course_directory/course/macintyre-park-dgc

Funky Mushrooms

It rained all week right after we got back from Ohio. The combination of lower temperatures and extra moisture made the mushrooms all over our favorite park grow like crazy! By the next week, they were everywhere: in the woods, in the fields, in the brush; and were all shapes, sizes and colors. Here are some of the most interesting ones we saw on our daily disc golf excursions.

This enormous (for comparison, the blue disc golf disc next to it is about 8 inches across) red and orange mushroom was growing on the edge of the woods along the path from hole F to 14. First time I'd ever seen a red mushroom!

July 17

Two days later, we spotted more red mushrooms. These were smaller and looked like something out of a Super Mario Brothers video game!

July 19

It started getting a little drier out but the interesting mushrooms kept coming. This one was more orange than the photo shows. I think it might be a chicken mushroom. It was pretty big, about the size of my fist. 

July 20

These delicate mushrooms are really hard to capture on film. They're almost thin enough to be transparent and their centers are a sunny yellow. Even the stems are thin and dainty, even though the top is about 2 1/2 inches across. 

July 22

The little bubble-looking mushrooms, on left, caught our eye on July 28. The next day we were surprised to see how much they had grown, on right, and how different they looked just 24 hours later.

 

Honestly I don't know if this last one is even a mushroom but it was definitely interesting seeing it growing up out of the mulchy-forest-floor. It was tall, maybe 3 1/2 or 4 inches high, and as colorful as it looks. At first I thought it was alive - it sorts of looks like a worm!

July 29

Fun Times in the Madison Area - Disc Golf

My son and I are big fans of disc golf. We play regularly at home, and I found a great course that is pretty close to Madison. We played three times while we were there. The best part about the course is that it's right on Lake Erie. The most challenging part of the course is there are a lot of hills to walk up and down!

(photo source: google maps)

The 16th hole:

Overlooking the lake:

View of Lake Erie: 

Overlooking the park pavilion and the lake:

Lakeshore Park Disc Golf
Ashtabula Township Lakeshore Park
1700 East 1st Street
Ashtabula, Ohio 44004