For today’s disc golf, Jon, John, and myself took a road trip down to Twin Parks country club which is located in Dripping Springs (south of Austin). It was surprisingly close and we arrived pretty early in the morning (8:05). The gate required a code for entry and noone answered the phone to let us in.

So we looked around at the scenery and spotted a couple goals for disc golf. After waiting a couple of minutes, we decided to head off for breakfast.

We found a packed gas station and headed in. In the back was a grill and a bunch of people ordering breakfast tacos. We had hit the jackpot! I ordered one potato and chorizo taco and one cactus and egg taco. Jon stayed away from it since it was green and a vegetable (or is it a fruit?). It was good and filling.

We arrived back at 9am and this time someone did answer the phone and told us the combo (a surprisingly easy one to guess after the fact). So we headed in. We stayed on the road which wound up a hill and arrived at a house. We figured that it was not where we were supposed to go. So we entered the inner gate instead and found the club house.

The clubhouse was pretty nice and spacious. They had a lot of couches and tables to rest at. And upstairs, they had a pool table and even three rooms that could be rented out. After we signed a waiver, we asked about the courses and were told to start at the upper one since it was hillier.

Each hole had a concrete pad to throw from that was “pointed” in the general direction of the hole. Also, each hole usually had a choice of three levels of difficulty (Champion, Pro, and Ace). The distances are some times drastic. For example, the champion would be 753, the pro would be 606, and the ace would be 354 feet. We decided to only play on the Champion tees (because we are).

One time, we were pretty close together in our throws.

The course had mostly tree obsticles but there was one small lake.

Which John managed to find. Fortunately, it was retreivable…

I managed to lose a disc in a tree and needed to invoke Jon’s superhuman tree-climing powers.

The land was around 110 acres. And, besides disc golf, there was mountain biking and paintball on the premises (and sometimes even a wedding). Apparently, the owner has an Ag-exemption because there is a herd of Elk that grazes on the land. And they were spotted on the disc golf course. We humans did not scare them off. So, John just decided to throw the disc. And he almost hit one!

There were gullies around, but, sadly, we did not throw off the edge of one to the other side.

After a break, we played the lower course. And this one was different than the previous one. It was all on flat, grassy land with fewer, larger trees.

The goals even had night-time lighting where solar panels recharged batteries. And there was malibou lighting for the tees as well.

The trees were sometimes used to great advantage. They provided the bounds of where discs could be thrown.

We did have one hiccup. Jon had thrown his disc and lost it. I had seen the disc go off course at the end. So, we searched around for it and did not see it. There was a grain feeder that had a ladder running up it. I climbed up there and looked around on the ground and did not see anything. We almost gave up when Jon finally spotted it up in a tree. Not five feet from where I was looking for it…

We headed back home and decided that, since we were down south, we should check out some new disc golf courses that we would never go to. After searching for a while, we found one course on Slaughter lane. It is called Circle C Ranch Metropolitan Park. Soccer teams we out playing in the park and parking spots were few and far between. So we stopped at the first open spot along the road that had a sign pointing to the disc golf course. It was not well marked but we eventually found the tee for hole one. We threw a couple of times and wondered if we could find the goal. But we eventually found it.

It seems that these holes are sponsored by different groups. Watch out for the Cursed Ronin! Don’t mess with that hole!

Even though my mind was willing, my body was tiring out. At hole five, I threw my disc and it veered off to the left. So, I took a penalty and threw again. But this time it veered off to the right! Argh! I gave up. And when we reached the goal, so did John and Jon.

Here are some higher-res pictures of the club house: