Golf on Christmas Day

Tuesday, 25 December

The weather forecast called for a cold front to move in, with precipitation at higher elevations.  Meaning, it was going to get chilly where we were, and where we thought we might meander.

A recent tradition for us is to play golf on Christmas Day.  At home, our golf club is closed, but as members, we are allowed to walk it and play on Christmas.  As we researched various golf courses, most of them are closed, and lacking a walking cart, we figured it was going to be a challenge to play golf anywhere.

We set Yuma, AZ as a possible place to go, which would be warmer than most.  More of a goal as the camp office was closed, did not take reservations anyway, and we could not find out if there was even a chance of a place to stay.

Along the general route, we located a county park what had RV camping (for $14/night for full hookups, $8/night dry camping) and a nine hole golf course.  The web site said the park was “open 7 days a week” and made no mention about whether it was open or closed on Christmas.  When we pulled in, we saw people of on the old course.  We learned from one of the RVers staying at the adjacent RV park that while the park was closed, we could play for free.  And they had pull carts to use, also for free.  The lady who runs the pro shop come over to help and made sure we knew the course layout, etc.

The course was a true desert course.  As a par 32 for 9 holes, it had no par 5s.  Only the tee boxes, greens and area adjacent to the greens had any grass.  The rest was just southwest desert.  For those not familiar, Southwest desert is not sand - it is rock.  Some places it is small rock, in other places, larger rock.  So if you mis-hit, you were hitting off rock.  The course rewarded accurate shots and penalized poor shots.  We both played the first nine pretty well, although we were not keeping score.  I recall Kris was up by two strokes after nine holes.  We changed into shorts for the second nine as it had warmed up.  Darrell got serious, and went birdie, par, birdie, birdie on the first four holes second time around.  After his second birdie, Kris turned to Darrell and said “you are buying”.  And that was with 6 holes still to play.  Darrell worked hard to earn that distinction on the remaining 6 holes, finishing even par for the round.

After 18 holes, we were faced with a decision.  Did we play again or head on down the road.  As we did not have any reservations, we opted to head on down the road in case our Plan A did not work out, we would have time to sort out a Plan B, or C, or D, or . . . . .

We set our sights on Yuma, AZ as the warmest place we could be.  To get to Yuma, we were going through Quartzsite, AZ.  We took a few minutes to cruise up Central Avenue in Quartzsite to get a lay of the land a bit.  We even pulled into the Scenic Road RV Park to check out the campground.

We then headed for the Desert Breeze FamCamp at Yuma Proving Grounds, north of Yuma.  We had tried unsuccessfully several times to just ask if there was a possibility of getting in.  When we arrived, the camp host greeted us, and told us all 102 full hookup sites were occupied.  The only sites he had were the “partial” sites, which we learned meant they only had water and electric for $20/night.  Perfect for Sprinty.  Nothing fancy, but technically a pull through site.