Man trip 2016...

Did you aver have something you have waited for for a long time and when it finally comes about it doesn't live up to your expectations?  Well, that was not the case with this year's Man Trip -- our annual golf outing to somewhere in North Carolina. We had a great time.  The weather was beautiful and the golf courses were all decked out in budding flowers and trees.  Of course the pine pollen was pretty high, but that didn't seem to have any impact on the flight of the ball, so we tried not to take notice. 

This year, we went with 12 guys.  First time for that, and I wasn't sure if it would work out.  I know how hard it is sometimes getting the family organized to go somewhere (kinda like herding cats).  But that was not the case.  Maybe it's just that the group was made up of all easy going, friendly types, who just wanted to get away from our Ohio winter and play golf. No agendas, no PC preconditions, no "holier-than-thou" issues.  Just a common pursuit of those elusive pars and birdies.

We stayed at the  Village Inn Events Center in Clemmons, NC.  They put together a pretty nice golf package and the price was right ($249 per person for three 18-hole rounds of golf, carts, and 3 nights rooms). They also included breakfast each day, comp. drink nightly at their bar, and a meeting room for our group to use while we were there.

We played the Reynolds Championship course, the Reynolds Course, and Salem Glen golf course.  The Championship course was super tough.  95 sand traps ... big, deep, tough traps that took a bit of skill to avoid or (lacking that) get out of.  I cannot guarantee that there were 95 traps, but the group I played with can attest to at least 80 of them !!  There were a couple of different kinds of sand in the traps too.  Some had white fluffy sand, while the others had a redish sand.  The starter at the course told us that the club was looking to replaced the redish sand with the white kind, and it was going to cost in excess of $1.25 million just for the sand.  One thing that they did do was to redo all the fairways.  When we were there last (maybe about 5 or 6 years ago), the fairways were rough and brown early in the year.  Now, they all have been redone and play spectacularly.  When I was in the fairway (which surprisingly was a lot of the time), I never had a bad lie.  As a result, I didn't play too badly.

This was a pretty good test run for doing the same thing next year.  There are still several courses in that area that needed to feel the wrath of this group, and since the accommodations and food were both pretty good, and the drive is not hatefully long (only about 9 hours), we will probably look at this area again next year.

There were not very many people around on the Salem Glen course when we finished, so Dave took one for the team and took this picture of the group.

It's a road trip...it's about friendship, adventure and fun...it's not like we have to be somewhere anymore!
 Hooah