I would say for first time visitors, it is not easy to find your way around the resort. I drove a bit in circles to find the bag drop area. And parking for the courses was a bit of a trek.

Arrival at the resort is at the top of the hill under a large covered area where resort employees await to assist with your luggage and vehicle. Check-in is quick and painless and you are presented with a resort map to aid you in making your way around the resort.

The resort is large with over 1000 rooms including 85 suites. I was placed in a fourth floor king room with all the amenities you'd expect from a high end resort. The room even had a porch overlooking a plaza with the resort's River Bluff Water Experience just to the right. I was extremely pleased.

Parking is in the parking lots below the resort and valet service is available.

There are five dining options and all are casual and laid back. They are located on the level below the lobby.

The Cibolo Moon is the resort's main restaurant and is open for breakfast at 6:30 and also lunch and dinner. The cuisine is Texas casual. My breakfast was served in this restaurant and a person could not ask for more as it was a complete breakfast bar with omelets to order, fresh fruit, all the staple breakfast eggs and meats and even a pastry station.

The High Velocity is an American grill with a sports bar menu. Most bar drinks are served and the grill has 24 local craft brews on tap.

The Rivertop Grill is across the outside patio at the waterpark serving San Antonio regional cuisine such as fish tacos, carne asada and carnitas made with fresh ingredients.

The Replenish Spa Bistro, located at the resort's Spa serves food and beverages intended to assist in relaxing the body and mind such as smoothies and after treatment lunches.

The Crooked Branch Lobby Bar serves American cuisine focusing on fresh products from the San Antonio region. I had a late afternoon meal here with several craft beers.

There is also a Starbuck's onsite and a Tequila Bar next to the Cibolo Moon.

As stated above, I played the AT&T Canyons Course upon arrival at the resort on Tuesday afternoon. The Canyons Course is a Pete Dye design. It is unlike any Dye course I have played and I never would have guessed it's his design. The course features extremely wide fairways and a great deal of elevation change. Various strains of Bermuda grasses carpet its ground. Water comes into play on only one hole, the par 3 fourth hole.

Although the course is ranked the 20th best public course in the state by Golf Magazine, I was quite disappointed with the conditioning of the course. As I made my way to the first tee, I spent a little time on the Canyons' practice green which was infested with poa annua grass making it impossible to gauge the green speeds. Many of the tees were pocked marked with deep divots.

There are five sets of tees ranging from 5053 yards to 7106 yards with a slope rating of 119 to 139. The front nine does not play back to the clubhouse and there is a halfway house with food and a comfort station.

All in all, the Canyons Course is a good warm-up for the Oaks Course.

​The Oaks Course is ranked 84th on Golf Digest's 2017 "America's Top 100 Greatest Public Courses" list and ranked the 6th best public course in the state by Golf Magazine. The course was designed by Greg Norman with assistance from Sergio Garcia.

The course is much flatter than its sister Canyons Course with only 100 feet of drop from the highest point to the lowest point of the property. The course winds through native oak trees and features bunkering with rugged edges. And the bunkers are deep! Only two holes have forced carries but just about every green is guarded by bunkering and elevated from the fairway.

One interesting design feature is that the downhill holes play into the prevailing wind and the uphill holes play downwind.

Finally, Norman placed a bunker right in the middle of the 16th green mimicking the 6th green at Riviera.

There are five sets of tees ranging from 5514 yards to 7435 yards with a slope rating of 123 to 145. The course is quite a bit more difficult than the Canyon Course. Bring your A game.

​I stayed at the resort on a Stay & Play package which included the room for one night, two rounds of golf (one at each course), complimentary drinks at the Crooked Branch Lobby Bar, and a full breakfast at the Cibolo Moon, the resort's main restaurant. Total cost, including the resort's $40 resort fee, was just a shade over $500.

​I thoroughly enjoyed my stay here and give it my full endorsement.

Many of you are aware of this blogger's Quest - my attempt to play every course on both Golf Magazine's and Golf Digest's Top 100 Public Courses lists. Golf Digest's list is biennial and now published in June of each odd year. The list was first published in 1966 and is the golf game's oldest ranking of public courses. I have played 88 courses on the current list. Golf Magazine's list, until recently, was published in September of even years. I have played 92 courses on the current list and 198 of the 213 that have ever been on any of the eleven lists, the first of which was published in 1996.

For some time, I have been meaning to check off three courses in Texas: the Tournament Course at The Woodlands, just north of Houston; the Palmer Course at La Cantera in San Antonio; and the Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio.

After a brief rainy stay at Orange Beach, AL during Spring Break, I ventured west to accomplish my Texas goal.

Formerly known as the TPC at The Woodlands and a public course, it is now a private course and known as the Tournament Course at The Woodlands Country Club. Opened in 1978, Bruce Devlin and Robert von Hagge were the course architects. The course was ranked 90th on Golf Magazine's very first "Top 100 Courses You Can Play" list in 1996. ClubCorp purchased The Woodlands Country Club in 2015.

The Tournament Course was the longtime home of the Houston Open from 1985 to 2002, hosted the LPGA Tour's Samsung World Championship in 2003, and beginning in 2008, has hosted the PGA Champions Tour's Insperity Invitational.

I left Orange Beach, AL at 5:00 AM on Saturday, April 6 and drove just less than eight hours to The Woodlands to get ready for my 3:00 PM tee time. Unfortunately for me, my tee time was directly behind a group of 24 golfers in a Ryder Cup competition...and the booze was flowing freely! So I had a good bit of time for "on the course" practice as the traffic behind me was light and all eventually gave up. This was one of the first times on a course that I've heard the on course beverage cart employees complain about the sobriety of a group.

I have no complaints about the golf course. Crews were at the site erecting spectator seating for the Insperity Invitational which would be held May 3-5 so the tenth tee was shifted to protect the workers. The course was in excellent shape and greens were fast. I experienced a first on a golf course during this round. From 100 yards in, golfers were required to hit approach shots to the par 5 15th hole off movable mats in order to save the course from unnecessary scars four weeks prior to the tournament. Made lots of sense to me.

After a round of over five hours, I spent the night at a brand new Holiday Inn & Suites in Shenandoah, TX, a mere 4 miles from the course.

Several years ago, Randy Matthias, a member and shareholder of my home course Coyote Creek in Fort Wayne, IN moved to Austin, TX for employment reasons. This Sunday, I would finally achieve a goal of playing a round of golf with Randy in the Austin area before he moves back to The Fort.

But would Mother Nature cooperate?

The day dawned with electricity in the air and my two hour and fifteen minute drive to Wolfdancer Golf Club in Lost Pines, TX, due west and just south of Austin was going to be a very wet one. So wet that I even pulled off to the side of the road to wait out the torrential thunderstorms.

Randy had been warning the weather would be iffy and he was correct. When I arrived at Wolfdancer, it was raining hard and our 10:50 tee time was not going to happen. So Randy and I did what any upstanding golfer would do. We sat in the pub and drank beer until the course reopened.

Two hours later, we were on the first tee of a course that was drenched with a "Cart Paths Only" rule in effect.

Wolfdancer is a fabulous Arthur Hills designed golf course owned and operated by Hyatt Regency.

That is, the design is fabulous. The course is in TERRIBLE shape! Randy and I were very surprised. This course was ranked the #10 "Best Courses to Play" in Texas by Golfweek as recently as 2017. The greens fee is over $100. Hyatt obviously is not putting any money into course maintenance. The greens were shaggy, the aprons were overgrown with poa annua. The tees were unkept. And I will not allow an excuse of "bad weather" for the state of the golf course. What we saw was several years in the making.

​Although Randy and I had a great time playing the course together, there were so many better options had we known. And we are not going to blame our friend, Dan Meese, a former Austin resident for his lousy recommendation. He could not have known.

The course was in such bad shape I didn't even try to capture images for this blog. But I did see a nice hillside of bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas.

Randy and I left the course and I followed him to a great little burger joint in downtown Austin where we ended the day as all upstanding golfers would, drinking beer and eating bar food. Ha!

We said our goodbye's and Randy headed north to Leander and I headed south to my lodging for two nights, another Holiday Inn & Suites in San Antonio where I would play five rounds of golf the next three days.

I had a 7:20 tee time, the first of the day at The Quarry Golf Course in the Alamo Quarry Market area of San Antonio. The Quarry is ranked the 17th best public course in the state of Texas.

The course has two distinct nines. The front nine is a links style course with undulating greens, native grasses and a good amount of water. The back nine is set in an old limestone rock quarry pit.

Prior to being developed as a golf course, the land was the site of Cementville and the Alamo Quarry. The company on the site, Alamo Cement Company, produced Portland cement for buildings, roads, and structures throughout San Antonio. The company built the neighborhood called Cementville where the employees and their families lived. Still prominent to the west of the course are the 200 foot smokestacks that are reminders of the cement plant.

I neglected to write down the name of my partner for the day, a gentleman who was a member at the course and who served as a good guide as I played the course for the first time. It was a pretty uneventful round until the twelfth hole when we encountered the first skunk I have seen during a round of golf. We cautiously made our way to the green, staving off what could have been a trip ruining mishap.

By the time I walked off the course, the temperature was a splendid 80 degrees under a sunny sky.

I had been waiting for years to play The Palmer Course at La Cantera and was unable to work it into my course plan during my first three trips to Texas. I had the second tee time in the afternoon just after 2:00 following a morning event where the course had been unavailable for public play. So I had over two hours to kill before I could begin my round.

As I was sitting in a comfortable leather chair overlooking the 18th hole, I started thinking back to my final minutes at The Quarry and realized I had left a wind shirt and my putter cover in my cart. So much for time to kill. I quickly headed back to The Quarry and after a brief search in the cart storage area, I had my items and was back at La Cantera.

La Cantera Resort & Spa is one of the premier luxury resorts in San Antonio. In addition to golf (there is a second course called fittingly, The Resort Course), the resort overlooks Six Flags amusement park and offers fine dining and world class accommodations.

The Palmer Course was ranked as high as 48th on Golf Magazine's "Top 100 Courses You Can Play" list before dropping off in 2002. It is still ranked as the 8th best public course in Texas. The Arnold Palmer design features many uphill tee shots and just as many that are downhill. I am not normally a fan of blind tee shots but there were aiming stakes for every blind shot and I was not bothered by this feature.

There are five sets of tees ranging from 5684 to 6926 yards with a slope ranging from 116 to 142.

​​I really enjoyed the round and by the time I left the course, the temperature was in the low 90's. Ahhhhh. How I enjoy the hot weather!

I had the 7:15 tee time at Brackenridge Park on Tuesday morning and misjudged the traffic I would encounter as I drove to the course through the center of the city during rush hour. I arrived with less than ten minutes to spare, paid for the round and was on the first tee in a very ill-prepared state.

Brackenridge Park is the crown jewel of the Alamo City Golf Trail, a system of eight public golf courses. It was was opened in 1916 and is the work of famous golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast. Over the years, like many old public golf courses, it fell into a state of disrepair and many of Tillinghast's design features were lost. Fortunately, a 2008 redesign re-routed the course to Tillinghast's original layout. With a bigger budget came better course maintenance and today, the course is ranked the 19th best course in the state.

Additionally, the Texas Golf Hall of Fame is housed at the course.

If you follow me, you know I am a huge fan of the architects of old -- Donald Ross, Alister MacKenzie, C. B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor, George Thomas, William Bell, and of course, A. W. Tillinghast.

Tillinghast spent time in Scotland with Old Tom Morris and became a student of the game in addition to an excellent golfer. He is credited with over 260 designs and 24 of those designs have hosted major championships. He designed Pine Valley, Bethpage Black, Winged Foot, Philadelpia Cricket Club, Canterbury Golf Club, and San Francisco Golf Club to name a few.

He liked deep bunkers framing short par threes and double dogleg par 5's to test a player's accuracy. And he was a proponent of tee shots in which the best strategy brought danger into play but rewarded the successful shot. He loved trees and used them to define the proper line of play but never used them to encroach the front of greens. He wasn't into blind shots into greens and designed greens that sloped front to back with one of the sides higher than the other. And he did not use template holes like some of his contemporaries.

I was paired with Brad and Lisa, a couple from the Pacific Northwest vacationing in the southern US with a next stop of Scottsdale, AZ. We had the first tee time and played at a good pace.

The only annoying aspect of play was the condition of the greens. All the greens had been heavily sanded the previous day and with the dew of the early morning, were very slow as the ball was covered with a line of sand whenever it came to a stop. Early during the back nine the dew had dried, the greens were still slow, but the ball no longer picked up the sand.

One interesting note about the layout is the back nine begins with a par 3 hole and ends with a par 3 hole. There are four sets of tees and yardage ranges from 5543 to 6243 with a slope from 118 to 126. This is a very nice course that is not overly demanding.

If the other seven courses on the Alamo City Golf Trail are as fine as this, I can see a return trip to San Antonio.

​Like the previous day, the temperature rose throughout the day and we enjoyed a mid-80's temperature by the end of the round.

​Last, check out Brackenridge Park's logo ball above. It is one of the more unique logo balls I've seen.

Upon completing my round at the Canyons Course, I checked into the resort. You can find my review of the resort elsewhere on this site.

​I had the first tee time on the AT&T Oaks Course on Wednesday morning and as a result, my breakfast at the resort was a bit rushed. The restaurant opens at 6:30 AM and I needed to be out of there no later than 7:00. I checked out of my room and loaded my vehicle in plenty of time to be at the door of the restaurant when it opened.
​
I spent about 10 minutes on the driving range getting loose for the round and when I arrived at the first tee, was greeted by a twosome, one of whom very rudely announced they had the first tee time. Knowing they were making it up and that I had a seven hour drive facing me at the conclusion of the round, I pushed back and let them know I would be playing along, hoping I could move ahead of them pretty quickly as the round unfolded.

As we hit our tee shots, a fourth person arrived at the tee and we began the round as a foursome. Bob and James were the two characters in the twosome and the single was Tony Gill, a retired PGA Club Pro from Connecticut. Tony was at the resort with his wife, an executive with one of the New York banks attending a sales conference.

Let me just say Bob and James selected the wrong tees to play. At 6624 yards, it was way beyond their level of skill. This worked in my and Tony's favor as they sent us ahead before we finished the second hole.

So it would be smooth sailing.
​
The Oaks Course is ranked 84th on Golf Digest's 2017 "America's Top 100 Greatest Public Courses" list and ranked the 6th best public course in the state by Golf Magazine. The course was designed by Greg Norman with assistance from Sergio Garcia.

The course is much flatter than its sister Canyons course with only 100 feet of drop from the highest point to the lowest point of the property. The course winds through native oak trees and features bunkering with rugged edges. And the bunkers are deep! Only two holes have forced carries but just about every green is guarded by bunkering and elevated from the fairway.

One interesting design feature is that the downhill holes play into the prevailing wind and the uphill holes play downwind.

Finally, Norman placed a bunker right in the middle of the 16th green mimicking the 6th green at Riviera.

There are five sets of tees ranging from 5514 yards to 7435 yards with a slope rating of 123 to 145. The course is a bear to play. Cory Connors had just completed 72 holes three days earlier at 20 under par to win the Valero. And you're struggling to break 90! It is quite the wake-up call to understand the level of professional play compared to your own.

After finishing my last of seven rounds of golf in Texas, I was on the road, facing a seven hour drive through Austin, Waco, and Dallas. Amazingly, the drive came off without a hitch and traffic was not an issue.

I spent the night at a Baymont by Wyndham and was on the road the next morning before 4:00 AM, facing a drive of five hours to Blytheville, AR where I would play Thunder Bayou Golf Links, ranked the 5th best public course in the state of Arkansas.

I arrived a bit before 9:00 AM and was on the tee by 9:15. The sky was overcast and the wind was fierce! And I was one of a very few people on the course. I played through a foursome on the eighth tee and it was smooth sailing from there.

Thunder Bayou is a links style course with over 80 bunkers and water on seven of the holes. It has five sets of tees with yardage ranging from 4851 to 7232 with a slope of 120 to 143. The Bermuda fairways were just leaving their state of dormancy as the ground had not yet reached the temperature at which Bermuda grass begins to green up. The bent greens were firm and average in speed.

I know it was early in the season but you could see the course had lacked some TLC for awhile. See the two photos. The layout is outstanding...very enjoyable to play. Perhaps summertime with a good spurt of growing will cure the course's ills. 

I was off the course by 11:15 and began an eight hour, 533 mile drive home. For the day, I drove 860 miles in a little less than thirteen hours with a break at Thunder Bayou of two hours and fifteen minutes.

For the trip, I covered 3179 miles over ten days through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, back through Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and finally back into Indiana.

And on the logo golf ball front, I was a perfect ten for ten.

And so another successful trip by the Logo Ball Traveler is in the books.

​Next up: Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina in June. 

One of the most amazing golf trips of my life ended two years ago. I played all 43 golf courses on Route 66 in 19 days while driving my restored 1966 Mustang. Oh, and I was in my 66th year!

Here's the quickest way to read about this adventure...and you will find it was much more than just a "golf trip." Click on the link below and then click on the link at the bottom of each day's wrap-up to quickly move to the next day.

Start reading here:
http://logoballtraveler.com/1/post/2016/07/route-66-trip-begins-saturday-morning-44-courses-in-19-days.html

And listen while you read:

Bobby Troup (the writer of Get Your Kicks On Route 66):
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLUYf6cekMA

Nat King Cole:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYApJtsyd0

Asleep at the Wheel:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vifUaZQL8pc&index=3&list=RDBgeVx8QoVaQ

Diana Krall:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgeVx8QoVaQ&index=1&list=RDBgeVx8QoVaQ

Rolling Stones:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc8_Qs_y-xs

Today was the biggest driving day of the trip so far with 320 miles into the heights of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, NM. I started the day early with a photo op at the geographical midpoint of Route 66 in Adrian, TX, just 14 miles west of the motel. Another 120 miles later, I was in Santa Rosa, NM for a round at the nine hole Tres Lagunas Golf Course. Then 104, mostly uphill miles to Santa Fe for a round at the nine hole Quail Run Golf Course and finally, 70 miles to Albuquerque ending at the Monterey Motel. As the drive came to an end, there was an issue with the Mustang transmission that may be related to overheating/vapor lock causing the engine to be starved for gas as it comes up to speed.

Since my tee time in Santa Rosa, NM was at 7:15 A.M., I had to get the day started early. I left the motel before 6:00 A.M. knowing I would gain an hour driving into Mountain Standard Time.

Just 14 miles to the west of my motel is the Midpoint Cafe and a Midpoint Marker across Route 66. It was still dark when I parked to take a picture, the sun just trying to peak above the horizon. The midpoint is said to be exactly 1139 miles from Chicago and 1139 miles from Los Angeles.

Five miles later, it was necessary to enter I-40 since Route 66 is no longer accessible from I-40 Exit 18 to the border town of Glenrio, TX.

I got off at the Glenrio exit hoping to rejoin Route 66. I found a ghost town that was once a bustling border town. You can see what the interstate did to Glenrio.

I drove past the remains and soon hit "dirt 66". Not wanting to drive on gravel, I turned around and re-entered I-40. Once into New Mexico, I traveled on both the north and south I-40 Frontage roads, the old Route 66, passing through the town of San Jon and into 

Tucumcari where I snapped a picture of the famous Blue Swallow Motel. Looks like a good place to spend the night!

It is necessary to use I-40 for significant stretches through New Mexico as the remains of old Route 66 are not always driveable.

Out of Tucumcari, I drove about 18 miles on I-40 before using both the north and south Frontage roads to make my way into Santa Rosa where I would be playing the nine hole city course.

When I got to the course, I discovered it was actually named Tres Lagunas Golf Course. Russell Sanford, the Course Superintendent told me it takes its name from the three lagoons that are on the property, originally installed by the railroad to power the old steam locomotives.

When I was planning the trip, I spoke to Russell on the phone and he indicated New Mexico had been experiencing drought conditions and the fairways were not in good shape.

So my expectations were pre-set. There was nobody at the course when I arrived even though the pro shop was unlocked. I stopped in, got a scorecard, put my bag on my back and headed out to the first tee.

The course apparently has not been measured by golf companies such as Sky Caddie so it was a good old fashioned round of golf with no measuring devices. There were 100, 150, and 200 yard markers but that was it.

As Russell had forewarned me, the fairways were burned out but the course had received rain in the recent past as the ground was soft. The teeing areas and green complexes were plush although the greens had not been mowed for a few days and were covered with morning dew. So the speed of these greens were a big contrast to the greens I putted yesterday at Amarillo Country Club.

After I finished the second hole, Russell met me at the third tee. He apologized that the greens had not been cut but both of his greens mowers were down. He had been out to borrow a mower from a local business.

Even given the above, it was a most enjoyable round in the cool, humid air, carrying the bag for nine holes.

Tres Lagunas has no logo balls although Russell told me he has discussed it with the city. He hopes to have logo balls in the future. So the count now stands at twenty-one for thirty-one.

I left the course with my next stop Joseph's Bar and Grill in Santa Rosa. But I played so quickly, the restaurant was not yet open so I moved on down the Mother Road.

There are two basic Route 66 paths through New Mexico (an oversimplification as there are many remnants that can or maybe can't be used). One track parallels I-40 (or more accurately, I-40 parallels Route 66) to Albuquerque. The other route, known as the pre-1937 route (or the Santa Fe Loop) begins about 19 miles west of Santa Rosa at I-40 Exit 256 and goes north up through Santa Fe before turning south down to Albuquerque.

Since there is one Route 66 course on the Santa Fe Loop, that's the route I had to take. On the way from Santa Rosa, you are on a steady climb into the high plains. As I drove toward Santa Fe, I watched the altimeter on my Garmin register over 7500 feet around the little town of Glorietta.

Soon I was at Quail Run Golf Club, a private nine hole course that is an amenity of the residential community surrounding it.

Zach in the Pro Shop set me up with a cart and I was off. Quail Run is a good test of golf with five par 3's (two over 190 yards), three par 4's, and a 515 yard par 5. Drives generally have to thread a narrow chute. The course is in good shape and it was fairly empty when I played. It didn't hit me until I was playing the eighth hole that the ball flies about 10% farther at 7500 feet above sea level. That's why my irons were going so deep into the greens.

Quail Run was out of logo balls so the final count for the day is twenty-one for thirty-two. Not good.

I left Quail Run and started the 70 mile trip to my motel in Albuquerque. Route 66 overlays the El Camino Real for most of the way to Albuquerque and goes dead through the heart of Santa Fe. I did my best to follow the route but did make a few wrong turns.

The same thing happened to me when I neared Albuquerque. My motel, the Monterey Non-Smokers Motel, is on Central Avenue, the main artery through town. Central Avenue cuts right through the campus of the University of New Mexico and is very congested.

It was in the mid to upper 90's and I was a little concerned about vapor lock with the temperature under the hood so hot and no air flowing around the radiator. As I entered Albuquerque, I started experiencing some problems with the transmission and I am hopeful they will clear up with a cooling system that isn't fighting such temperature extremes.

I am thrilled with the motel. It is clean, has every amenity you could want, and the parking spot is right outside the room. Two packages of Belvita cookies are provided in the room. And the Albuquerque Country Club, my sole course for tomorrow, is directly behind the motel.

The motel was built in the late 1930's and has been owned for the past 18 years by Henry and Bo Elencwajg. We struck up a conversation about our Polish ancestry.

Henry could not have been any nicer. He took the time to explain that Albuquerque's Old Town is no more than seven minutes walking from the motel. He got out a map of Old Town and provided some restaurant recommendations.

Route 66 is directly astride Old Town. It is anchored by the 223 year old San Felipe de Neri Church. The church is surrounded by a tree lined courtyard and many restaurants and shops. Henry stressed the fact that it is very safe to walk to Old Town, even later in the night. The area was full of shoppers and diners.

After I settled into my room and showered, I walked over to Old Town, ending up at Hacienda del Rio Restaurant where I had an authentic Mexican dinner and, of course, an IPA. And I was even able to complete a bit more of my gift shopping.

Tomorrow is a light day with only a 2:30 round at the Albuquerque Country Club. So I have some time to kill tomorrow morning. The later round means I will not arrive at my next motel in Gallup, NM at the Arizona border until 9:00 P.M. or so. So while the morning is laid back, the evening will be tough.

And the wildcard is the Mustang transmission. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Stay tuned.

Day 14: http://logoballtraveler.com/1/post/2016/07/route-66-day-14-last-round-in-new-mexico-a-classic-hotel-in-gallup-and-a-mustang-spinning-like-a-top.html

I left the motel at 6:00 A.M to drive the 28 miles to Elk City for breakfast. And the photo ops just kept on coming. After breakfast, I drove 18 miles to play the Sayre Golf Course and bring the Oklahoma slice of the trip to a close. After the round, I set out on the 136 mile trip to Amarillo, TX to play the Amarillo Country Club. As I neared the course, the skies darkened and I was in a thunderstorm as I entered the gate and golfers were being pulled off the course. After a brief delay, play continued and I successfully completed the 30th round of the trip. On the 32 mile drive to the motel, I made a stop at the much ballyhooed Cadillac Ranch.

I wasn't two minutes down the road this morning when I saw a golf course that wasn't on my list. No problem though; it was a miniature golf course in Clinton, OK.

I planned to drive a little this morning before I ate breakfast in Elk City, OK. The morning was clear and the sky blue. The first town I passed through was Canute and I was drawn to a sign at the Cotton Boll Motel, shut down long ago.

As I drove into Elk City, I saw a huge oil rig and as it turns out, when built in the 1960's, it was the biggest oil rig in the world. The rig was shipped to Elk City from Oklahoma City where it was being stored. It was rebuilt in Elk City on a vacant lot. The rig is seventeen stories high and sits next to the Andarko Basin Museum of Natural History.

Breakfast was at the Home Cooking Cafe. Just about as soon as I sat down, Max, a local in his sixties started chit-chatting with me about the economy, local politics and national politics. We were both capably waited on by our server Janice. 

Upon leaving, I still had an 18 mile drive to Sayre, OK for my last round in Oklahoma. On the way out of Elk City, I spotted a huge Route 66 sign outside the National Route 66 Museum.

Sayre is quite a town! It is the hometown of Roger Miller (of King of the Road fame) and Sheb Wooley (of Purple People Eater fame). Both have highways named for them west of town. On the east end of town, I spotted the Western Motel sign. I'm sure it looks great when the neon is lit at night.

I arrived at the course around 8:30 and was the first person there. By 8:45, three other golfers had arrived and told me they'd be opening the shop by 9:15 or so. We chatted about my car and my Route 66 trip. They told me the grounds crew could get me a cart as soon as the gate was unlocked.

I met Brad Spitzer who seems to be quite a jack of all trades for the city. Because the current course manager is down with a bad back, he has taken it upon himself to oversee the maintenance of the course and dutifully mows the greens every day not to mention dealing with insects and fungi that comes with the territory.

Brad is also the Co-Publisher and General Manager of the local newspaper, The Record-Democrat. He could not have been nicer to me! He gave me his personal golf cart, explained the nuances of the course, stopped and visited with me as my round proceeded and even took my picture.

He told me about the signature hole, number five, where you can see the Sayre Courthouse in the background. The Sayre Courthouse gained notoriety when it was briefly shown in the old movie, "The Grapes of Wrath."

I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the brief time I spent on the golf course and especially the hospitality shown to me by Brad.

No logo balls were to be found at Sayre Golf Course so the trip count now stands at twenty for twenty-nine.

I left the Sayre Golf Course to begin the 136 mile drive to Amarillo where I would be playing the Amarillo Country Club.

After driving 22 miles and passing through the towns of Hext, Erick and Texola, I was at the Texas border. I was about to begin a less exciting piece of the trip.

Route 66 through Texas is two lanes most of the way and nearly every section of the road is a frontage road right next to I-40, either on the north side or the south side. You'll be driving 60 mph on Route 66 right next to vehicles on I-40 that are going 75 mph. Every now and then, you'll pass under or over I-40 to the other side. Periodically, you'll slow down through a town, some very tiny.

One of the towns I passed through was Shamrock. There is a recently restored U-Drop Inn/Conoco Gas Station on the main corner. A piece of history. Directly to the east of this beautiful restoration in the same parking lot is a Tesla Charging Station. I love the irony--old meets new.

As I neared Amarillo for a 2:00 tee time, I noticed the skies darkening to the west. "Here we go again," I thought. Sure enough, when I was about 5 miles from the course, the skies opened up. I drove through rain until I reached the course and it was just drizzling.

All the golfers had been pulled off the course because of the lightning threat. I hung around until the all clear signal was given and was allowed to tee off on the back nine and play the front nine as my second nine.

What a great course! I mentioned the greens at the Clinton Riverside Golf Course in yesterday's post as being the best on the trip. The Amarillo greens are among the best I've ever putted, stimping at about 13 and as smooth as a pool table. I loved putting those greens! The course is a good test but certainly not a killer. Except for a few water hazards and the out of bounds markers, there wasn't much trouble.

I scored a logo ball and the end of the day tally stands at twenty-one for thirty.

I thanked Head Professional Dell Wood for hosting me and I set out on the 32 mile trip to Vega, TX where I would be eating dinner and checking into a hotel.

But just outside Amarillo and just south of Route 66 is the Cadillac Ranch. It's not really a ranch but a sculpture about 1000 feet off the road in a farm field that was funded by a local eccentric millionaire. There are 10 Cadillacs representing the evolution of the tailfins of the Cadillac from the 1949 to the 1963 model buried nose first in the ground at an angle mimicking the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

The place was packed with people, most of them armed with cans of spray paint even though the ground was muddy from the recent rain. Grafitti is encouraged.

I was looking forward to eating dinner at the Boot Hill Saloon & Grill in Vega, TX but when I got there, it appeared to be out of business or undergoing a remodeling.

Disappointed, I checked into the Bonanza Motel right next door and settled for fast food.

As I was checking in, a man walked across the parking lot and asked me if I remembered three motorcyclists I had passed on Route 66 yesterday. I mentioned this in yesterday's post. They recognized my car. There are two friendly men and a woman from Holland who have 38 days to make their way across Route 66 by motorcycle. Amazing.

Tomorrow is a heavy travel day. Just 14 miles from here is the official midpoint in miles of Route 66. In all, I'll move another 330 miles down the Mother Road and play two nine hole courses, one in Santa Rosa, NM and the other in Santa Fe, NM before making my way to Albuquerque where I'll spend the night.

Day 13: http://logoballtraveler.com/1/post/2016/07/route-66-day-13-two-nine-hole-courses-and-a-mustang-mechanical-issue.html

This is Part 1 in a series of articles about my summer trip to the western U.S.

After fulfilling my volunteer duties by noon Wednesday at the Hotel Fitness Championship, the first of the Web.com Tour's playoff, I finished packing and made all the final preparations for the trip.

I left Ft. Wayne at 4:00 A.M. on Thursday, August 28. My first destination was Forest Ridge Golf Club in Broken Arrow, OK, just a bit southeast of Tulsa and near Mickey Mantle country. So fittingly, the first audio book opened for the trip was The Last Boy - Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy. This was a nearly 17 hour biography and I learned some disturbing things about a man so adored by so many people.

After a twelve hour drive, I arrived at Forest Ridge, recently named the third best public course in the state of Oklahoma. The temperature was a balmy 95 degrees and with nobody on the first tee, I hit a couple of practice putts and headed to the first tee. After four holes, I caught a foursome in front of me and as I waited to tee off on the fifth tee, was joined by two locals, Dan Riddle and Paul Rongey, and we played the final fourteen holes together. Dan and Paul were true traveling golfers just like me and we compared lots of notes as we made our way around the course.

Forest Ridge is a relatively flat golf course and pretty straightforward until the last five holes where club selection for the tee ball becomes important. The course has a good mix of doglegs both left and right and water comes into play on seven holes with three ponds and a creek on the front nine.

The prettiest hole is the par 3 15th, one that requires a short iron to a large green with water beginning from the tee and wrapping around the back of the green.

I just returned from a one month road trip that took me from Ft. Wayne, IN to San Diego, CA and back in nineteen days and after two days to regroup, another eight days away from home to Orange Beach, AL and back (with a quick stop in St. Francisville, LA). This was preceded by three days of volunteering at the Hotel Fitness Championship, the Web.com Tour's first 2014 playoff tournament, at Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Ft. Wayne.

I'm whooped! I think I know how Odysseus felt, though his trip was a bit longer and with more peril.

I played twenty-four rounds of golf in the first fourteen days, attended a four day Travel Writer's/Blogger's Conference in San Diego, drove back to Ft. Wayne in forty-six hours (with overnight stops in Phoenix and Oklahoma City), recovered for two days, traveled to St. Francisville, LA for another round of golf before resting on the beautiful beaches of the Alabama Gulf Coast for seven days followed by another fourteen hour drive back home.

This was the most complex trip I've ever planned. But I love when a plan comes together!

Here's a brief recap.

Beginning on Monday, August 25, I volunteered for three days at the Web.com Tour's Hotel Fitness Championship. This was the tour's first 2014 playoff/elimination tournament to determine which golfers earn status on the PGA Tour for 2015. I was a part of the Shuttles Team and my job was to shuttle the golfers and caddies from the Sycamore Hills clubhouse to the driving range and back. I had the early morning shift each day.

I left Ft. Wayne at 4:00 A.M. on Thursday, August 28. My first stop was in Broken Arrow, OK where I played Forest Ridges Golf Club. It just so happened Broken Arrow was about twelve hours from Ft. Wayne and a good point to stop driving a car and start driving a golf ball.

After a night in Oklahoma, I ventured south to Texas where I played in Nocona, TX and Runaway Bay, TX before making Horseshoe Bay Resort, just west of Austin, TX my playground for two days. Two of the courses at this resort are a part of my Quest.

After a Sunday morning round at the resort, I drove ten hours to Albuquerque, NM where I spent the night. The University of New Mexico Golf Course, which I played Labor Day morning, is another course that's a part of my Quest. Playing early morning, I was surprised to see a pack of Mexican Gray wolves. The wolf is commonly referred to as "El lobo" and is the mascot of the University of New Mexico.