The trip was definitely a fun one! Thanks for all of the tips on course selection everyone! I have a Google MyMap set up, and I found it pretty helpful for navigation. If anyone is planning to make a trip to to the Holland, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, or Luddington area, let me know and I can make a copy of it and give you ownership.
For reference, we played doubles all weekend between 4 of us, so there were two doubles teams. We pretty much stuck to schedule other than Friday. We were hoping to get more than 3 courses in, but those 24-hole courses really wear you out. Kind of stinks that we could only play one course at Mason County Park. We also had a lot of driving back to Iowa on Sunday, so really only had time for 2 courses that day.
Personally, I probably liked either the Leviathan course or Fallasburg course the best. Leviathan seemed to provide good shot variety and the most difficulty of all of the courses we played, but the uneven, short, rubber teepads were kind of a turn-off. Fallasburg also had great shot variety and I really enjoyed the layout and wooded feel to the course. Flip City was definitely fun too. It was maintained excellently. Every time I thought I was going to land in an area where it was going to be hard to find my disc, I found a nice path that had been mowed. I suppose I was hoping for slightly more shot variety and length out of Flip City, but still had a great time. Since we didn't have time to play more than 1 Mason County course (and I was pretty worn out by that point), I feel like we didn't get to experience the full glory of the park there. I would definitely like to come back sometime, but who if/when I'll have time for that.
Below is roughly the timeline we followed and courses that we played. All of the courses seemed to be in good shape. I may give more details later on my thoughts about each of the individual courses. Feel free to ask questions.
Courses in order that we played them:
Flip City
Leviathan
Mason Count Park - Beast
Fallasburg
Robert Morris
Rogers-Lakewood Park
Highland Park, Joliet, IL
Friday, we played 3 courses:
8:00 AM - Arrive at Flip City
- We played all 24 holes.
11:00 - Leave Flip City
12:30 - Arrive at Leviathan
- We played the longest tees (black I think?) for the first 18 holes and the shortest tees (red I think?) for the last 6 due to time/hunger?
3:30 Leave Leviathan
4:00 - 5:00 - Jamesport Brewing Co in Luddington
5 - Arrive at Mason County Parks
- Mason County - Beast all 24 holes
8:15 - Leave Mason County Parks - Luddington, MI
Didn't have time for more courses at Mason County Park unfortunately.
Saturday 2 courses, 2 breweries
9:00 Fallasburg Park
- Wasn't busy at all during this time, but more people started showing up by the time we were leaving.
11:30 - Leave Fallasburg
12:15 - 2 Lunch at Founders Taproom
- Tours were not available that day due to staff having to go to an offsite event they were hosting or catering? The taproom was pretty good sized. I enjoyed it.
3:00 - 4:30 - Bell's Tour
- Free tour. The tour was pretty short (30 minutes or less) and you only visit two rooms, so there's not a lot of walking. We had a pretty good guide and got free goodie bags (coasters, stickers, and pins). It was a good time.
5:00 Robert Morris Park ($5 per car I think?)
- Played all 18 holes. The course was fairly busy. A group on every other hole.
7:30 Leave Robert Morris
Sunday - 2 courses
8:30 - Arrive Rogers-Lakewood Park
- Played 18 of the 24 holes due to a storm rolling into town. Luckily we saw it on the radar, or we would have been wet.
- There were a 4-5 groups that were starting around the same time, so were kind of bunched up at the beginning. Skipping some of the holes definitely made it faster. It probably would have been a 3.5 hour round otherwise.
10:15 - Leave Rogers-Lakewood Park - 1.5-2.0 hour drive to the Canyons (including lunch)
5 Guys Burgers & Fries in Lockport, Il
We wanted to play the The Canyons, Lockport, IL, but there was a tournament that day. We ended up playing Highland Park which is 15 minutes away instead.
12:15 - 3:00 Highland Park, Joliet, IL
- We played a mixture of tees, but probably mostly the middle tees.
- Some players out there, but didn't seem busy out there.
(and yes, I always police my brass)
