Two Rivers, WI

Picnic Hill Park

2.195(based on 8 reviews)
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9 0
Jukeshoe
Diamond level trusted reviewer
Experience: 14.6 years 315 played 266 reviews
2.00 star(s)

Beautiful Enough for a (Very Wooded) Picnic

Reviewed: Updated: Played on:Jun 10, 2023 Played the course:once

Pros:

- Picnic Hill is an older course that seems to have fallen into disuse. The wooded ridge that the course occupies provides 12 holes of an older style of golf: short, technical, and wooded, but with an overall good eye for line shaping and elevation changes.
- The first hole is fairly open-ish, with trees at the left edge as you throw from the corner of Polk & 23rd up the hill to a basket nearly underneath the big water tower. There's no sign or visible tee for hole #1, so pick a spot that looks good to you. After that signage is a hit-or-miss affair. Look for the posts, and make sure you have access to DGCR's map link or else this will be a real slog. Even with the map, the tees for hole #'s 1, 8, and 9 are difficult to find. Downed trees and overgrown schule make picking out the small "animal trails" (aka course paths) more of a chore than it should be. The signs themselves have long ago shed the laminated paper stapled to the posts. And many of the natural tee areas are sketchy at best. Baskets are in fine shape, though.
- The woods are very beautiful with a wild, overgrown feel. Large patches of ferns and wildflowers make the course a joy to play even with the pain of navigation and routing.
- Several fun shots of an old school style...#'s 1 & 7 are fun tight uphill shots. Hole #9 is a downhill longer hole with plenty of opportunity to get in the crud.
- Most holes had two sets of tees, which often didn't add too much to the difficulty but did add to the routing confusion greatly, despite the occasional 'Next Hole' signage.
- My favorite holes were #7, and the #'s 1a-c additions between 1 & 2 that stretched the original design to twelve holes while eliminating a long awkward transition.

Cons:

- Routing and nav. See above. Definitely use the map found under the Links section, or else don't even bother.
- Overgrown, with knee-high schule, but generally thin enough to be playable, if that makes sense. This is wooded high schule, not solid knee-high prairie grass, so stuff like ferns and random scrubby plants. Finding discs in the rough wasn't too bad a deal despite the shagginess.

Other Thoughts:

- Inside knowledge from one of the courses og players (shoutout to tallpaul) is that this course was once quite nice and "cutting edge" but ran afoul of NIMBYs who would sabotage course maintenance and the like. While this was years and years ago, I can see where and why this course eventually fell into disrepair, which is a shame because the bones of a really solid 12 holes are here, it just needs some attention. I don't think the NIMBYs are still an issue from the look of the surrounding properties; someone should come give this place some love.
- With just a little effort this course would easily be a 2.5 disc course. Worth hitting if you're looking for a natural vibe and enjoy playing "find the holes in the woods" with no particular place to be. If you're on a bagging trip, I wouldn't necessarily say to skip this one, in fact, it's infinitely more enjoyable (to me) than, say, Pla-Mor; but, don't go without the map, and know what you're getting into in order to plan accordingly. Skip if in a hurry.
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9 0
Stardoggy
Diamond level trusted reviewer
Premium Member
Experience: 12.6 years 1002 played 214 reviews
2.50 star(s)

Nice, somewhat challenging park course 2+ years

Reviewed: Played on:May 10, 2014 Played the course:once

Pros:

Decent catching blue powder coated baskets on every hole. No problems here.

Nice use of elevation throughout the course. Hole 1 especially stands out. I really liked this as an opening hill. Steep uphill, with trees in the way.

Some nice risk/reward on several holes. Hole 2 has a significant drop on the right, which adds some pucker factor. I felt pretty good to hit some of the lines here.

Lots of nice wooded holes. Some tight, but fair lines, with good bends and turns.

Cons:

Navigation isn't all that intuitive. I had a map with me when playing, so I was pretty easily able to find hole 2, but otherwise it would have been a crapshoot. Hole 9 wasn't immediately easy to find, either.

Natural teepads that could use some TLC. They weren't horrible, but I was definitely thinking about footing on several of them. A couple of them weren't really well represented.

No long distance bomb holes here. Even playing from the longs, everything was on the short-ish side. The shorter tee pads would be ok for beginners, but could probably be done away with.


The signage here was lacking. Tee signs were poor, and navigational signs weren't very helpful.

Hole 9 ends a pretty good distance away from the start of the course, and kind of just throws you out into the city street. Good two block walk back to the car.

Other Thoughts:

This is a decent, out of the way 12 hole course. It felt like a scruffy little stepbrother of Silver Creek. There were some fun shots here, and with some love, this could be pretty nice.

It was pretty soggy when I was here, which seemed odd, as most of the course is up on a hill.

Worth a play if you're in the area, for sure.
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6 0
wolfhaley
Diamond level trusted reviewer
Premium Member
Experience: 19.9 years 970 played 542 reviews
2.50 star(s)

Decent little course 2+ years

Reviewed: Played on:May 18, 2014 Played the course:once

Pros:

This is a nice little 12 hole course in the wooded section of a small park. There are large wood poles with the hole #s on them for both sets of tees. They have a few next tee signs where needed. There's not much difference between the 2 tees on most holes but it's always a cool feature to have. The nice blue powdercoated Mach 5 baskets here are probably my favorite type of basket. They catch very well. Hole 1 is mostly open and uphill while the rest are on top of the hill in a more heavily wooded section. There are a good mix of right, left and straight shots to be had.

Cons:

Most of the holes feel pretty similar but there's only so much space here so there's not much they could do. It can get pretty muddy in a few places in the woods. Some of the tee areas were pretty poor so we had to tee off next to or behind them.

Other Thoughts:

If you're in the area it's worth a round or 2 here. It's nothing amazing but it's a fun little course to try for some aces. There are also a bunch of other courses near here. We played 8 in 2 days over here and had a blast. Just don't put this one at the top of the list.
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9 0
AdamE
Diamond level trusted reviewer
Experience: 20.5 years 264 played 143 reviews
2.00 star(s)

2+ years

Reviewed: Updated: Played on:Apr 7, 2012 Played the course:once

Pros:

Picnic Hills is a short but challenging wooded course set on top of a hill. There are two tees to cater to more players. The first hole has a big elevation change and there are a couple smaller elevation changes on a few other holes. With the exception of hole one, the course is completely wooded with defined fairways and on occasion, multiple routes to the basket. Hit your line and you'll score well here. For a 9 hole course, there's a good shot variety here with two holes forcing a turnover shot. The baskets are in great condition and colored blue which looks very nice.

Cons:

The is a long walk from hole 1 to 2, from 8 to 9 and from 9 back to the parking lot. Some walks are marked very well but others weren't marked at all when I was here.

It looks like 3 holes have been added between holes 1 and 2. These added holes are nice fillers and help with the long walk from 1 to 2.

The tee areas are dirt. A couple of them were bad enough to make me tee off from behind or next to the tee.

Two holes, 3 and 4 I believe, have too many trees in the fairway for me to consider them fair.

The course is rather short. The longest two holes are 266 and 288 with the rest being under 250 feet.

Other Thoughts:

The course is definitely fun and I enjoyed my round here, but the list of cons kept me from enjoying it more. The wooded fairways will be a fun challenging to rec golfers and this is a nice course to get new players into the game, but I wouldn't go out of your way to play here.
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11 5
Dave242
Gold level trusted reviewer
Experience: 29.8 years 393 played 271 reviews
0.50 star(s)

D+ = Disheveled Disrepair 2+ years

Reviewed: Played on:Jun 27, 2010 Played the course:once

Cons:

It is a rare occasion that I run across a course that is abandoned and in such disrepair that I cannot look past it (has only happened once before in almost 300 courses played). But I did rate this about half a disc lower because of a missing basket (hole 1) and trees down across 2-3 fairways.

What I personally like and how this course stacks up in my list of 9 hole courses (110 played):

1) Holes with good risk/reward. Fair, but harsh punishment for bad decisions or execution. == C
(Since the holes are shaped in such creative (funky) ways there is good punishment for not executing. But, as far a decision making things are pretty straight forward. And, the holes are short enough to where you can recover for par from pretty much any conceivable error.)

2) Holes that have rewarding birdie opportunities for me (I rate only from the long tees). I'm a Blue level player (950ish skill) who throws 300' accurately, 360' max. == C-
(With only two holes that take more than 75% power with a midrange, it is tough to garner much exhilaration from this course. But, the narrow and bendy fairways do indeed make things interesting on several holes.)

3) More wooded than open - lots of variety of shots required caused by hole shape and topography == B-
(This course is almost completely wooded and the only non-wooded hole (#1) is steeply uphill. There is fun variety in hole design - that is the strength of this course to be sure.)

4) Natural beauty (Appalachian beauty preferred) and seclusion. == C+
(For about half the course you are on a hill looking down over houses and a ballfield. I do feel alone and removed from society since I am above it all on that hill, but it is not the refreshing type of seclusion that charges up my batteries. The woods feel a little run down and are less beautiful than they could be if the fallen trees were removed.)

5) Bonus points for multi-throw holes with defined landing zones, good risk/reward and multiple options to play them. == NA (0 bonus points for this)
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10 0
harr0140
Diamond level trusted reviewer
Premium Member
Experience: 15.2 years 1508 played 475 reviews
2.50 star(s)

No picnic here! but lots of potential. 2+ years

Reviewed: Played on:Aug 30, 2009 Played the course:once

Pros:

1) Course is pretty technical which I always consider to be a positive.

2) #1 isn't a great hole but it does use the massive elevation from the entrance to the course by the sign and makes you throw up a very large hill . . . the basket is tucked to the left after clearing the hill and a couple trees so its a tough shot to execute despite being pretty short.

3) Holes #2-9 are all in pretty densely wooded area. They force some different shots because of ceilings on a few holes and also because some of them are straight some go right to left and some left to right. Most of the turns aren't big but enough to force some thought into the throws rather than just how straight you can keep it.

4) Potential of this course to expand and get better is high. it is in a pretty small town but I would like to see an effort to make improvements to it. It is short and only 9 but I think better than Indian Creek. It's a cool park in a nice small town.

5) #5 is a great challenging hole. It is a downhiller right to left with lots of trees. I parked the shot and tanked a short short putt. It is a real challenge to get close to the basket.

6) Elevation was used well on hole #1, 5, 6, 7. There isn;t much more elevation change but the rest of the holes are more gently rolling fairways.

7) Dual tees although not beginner friendly will offer a different approach for more disc golf.

Cons:

1) Course has a confusing layout, some of the directional signs are missing making finding #2 from #1 very difficult . . . I ended up doing the Vita course somehow before I found hole #2.

2) Tees leave a lot to be desired because they are gravel (except #1 its dirt).

3) When I played there was a padlock on the chains on #9 which would certainly affect the catchability of that basket. Either someone vandalized it and though it was funny or one of the people in the olds folks home broke out and hid the evidence on the basket.

4) Course flows ok and is jammed into a pretty tight area in this section of the park. #1 is disjointed from the other 8 holes. It starts out near the road at the base of the hill and you throw up the hill towards the water tower. Then you walk past the water tower down the road and to the left road to the second hole and the other 8 holes are in this same section of he wooded area.

5) Distance on holes is way to similar. You will be throwing different discs because of the intended lines but the distances are all about the same and all relatively short.

6) Tees on #7 need special attention in the negatives. They are on a giant uphill and are not retained with anything. It is obvious they have washed out a handful of times by the gravel at the bottom of the hill towards #16 fairway. I would rather see washed out dirt here than gravel that you can't get a good footing on.

7) Not beginner friendly because of how tight the fairways are with all those small trees. Beginners would get frustrated for sure!

8) Course sign at the entrance lead me to believe the course might be gone. It had old old postngs and is so sun bleached out it looks abandoned.

9) Not much difference between the two tees in angle or difficulty. The difficulty of this course is in how dense the woods are.

Other Thoughts:

I think this course is just a little outdated and could use some revamping. I like the wooded area the holes are set in and I also like the vita course track I ended up on (and it was overgrown so it obviously isnt maintained. I could see a handful more holes over there with just a little mowing and some more baskets. I am not sure if they could make some holes using hte hill going back down towards the ball fields but if they could this could be a great course!!! If the townspeople are reading this invite me up and I will give a free consultation on how to add some holes to this course I think I have some good ideas and trust me I spent a lot of time in this section of the park trying to find the second hole. I probably walked a half mile before realizing I wasn;t near where I needed to be! The holes that are there now are simply in need of some selective pruning and some concrete pads would make this course much better. Gravel tees are just horrible in my opinion.

I was a little creeped out by the nursing home or whatever it was to the west of holes 2-9. I could imagine some elderly peope walking into those woods on ocassion so be aware. If its a mental healht facility be even more careful.
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11 1
superberry
Gold level trusted reviewer
Experience: 25.9 years 332 played 95 reviews
1.50 star(s)

odd but technical 2+ years

Reviewed: Updated: Played on:Jul 13, 2008 Played the course:5+ times

Pros:

Wooded holes are tight and technical. They play along a nice wooded ridge with decent little elevation changes playing along or up and down it.
Tees are decently leveled crushed stone.
Most of the greens, being a 100% wooded course, are protected by some trees, but none are on or near risky elevation for fear of bad blow-by or rollaways.

Cons:

The course flow is horrible, due mainly to having lost land/holes to sale and being forced out of other areas.
Signs are almost non-existent, making flow even more poor.
Many holes have just been thrown in because this used to be 18 holes with a great mix and variety, but as the land sold and opposition came in they lost holes and had to make due. Unfortunately it was a feable attempt.
There is no water here, no huge downhills, very few risky greens, and not a lot of challenging holes with any distance. It also lacks variety - all wooded.
This one is decent, but defintely passable given other courses in the area such as Winter Park, Silver Creek, or even fox vallley area. Often times you will find many oblivious idiots out there picking flowers or mushrooms right in the middle of your play. These are the "Friends of Picnic Hill" association. You can thank them for what has become of what used to be a pretty nice course.
That being said, the traffic at this course is pretty high. It's not secluded and you can't really lose yourself in a round with all the apartments and city noise just feet away.

Other Thoughts:

Skip it and play some others in the area. This one has some nice short technical wooded holes, but not enough to draw more than a quick speed round. Go a bit north and play one of WI's best offerings, Winter Park, with all kinds of variety and incredible terrain, challenge, and beauty.
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4 7
Sensai Scuba
Experience: 17.8 years 7 played 7 reviews
4.00 star(s)

Tourny memories 2+ years drive by

Reviewed: Played on:Jun 25, 2009 Played the course:once

Pros:

If you ever feel the need to work on your wood shots.... This is the place to be. Instead of having all four basic disc golf food groups (wood/water/field/trick) this course designer decided to focus on the ever fun wood shot. I played this tournement in '07 (my only one ever played) and my first time playing through used the pro starts and got like a 5 over, then I used the amatuer starts for another circuit and got a 9 under, my Raven served me very well that day. I couldn't enter in my second score (which would have gotten me first place of course). It was a fun little course and I recommend to anyone just sort of driving though and wants a quick walk in the woods.

Cons:

Very well made for a specialty course
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