It's not that we're bad golfers, it's that we suck at golf. For our part, we were courteous and played within the rules (at least those we knew). Along the way we noticed a few things. One was how much effort this was requiring. The course itself was a mile (5953 yds) and even with a cart, we walked every bit of that, and then some.

The key was that this was a mountain course. Ie, someone mowed some grass along the side of a hill and called it a course. I don't think there were actual fairways, just narrow stretches of grass between the teebox and the green, bracketed on either side by a hill or a cliff.

Well, at least we made it to the second hole before losing a ball. Right in the open. Dammit. Of course I overshot the downhill green, bounced off the cart path and almost hit the guys in the next teebox. Worse was they got to laugh at me while I tried to chip back up the mountain to my green. Ugh.

It became obvious quickly that these 'greens' we speak of were not actually greens at all, but rather some sort of moveable table. That's the only way to explain how poorly we were reading these things. And the wildlife didn't help here either. Sometimes a beetle would move your ball, and one time we managed to kill a moth in mid-putt. Like it wasn't hard enough already.

The other bit of effort was related to swinging the club. Specifically the number of times we had to do this. A lot. I guess we figured since we paid double, we might as well play double? Dammit, what does 'par' really mean anyway?!

But at least we were enjoying nature. You'd think we weren't since we were playing golf, and those other folks were hiking. But I'd be willing to bet we saw better views and more wildlife than they did. Perched on top of a slightly smaller version of Mount Everest, we could see everything. The skyline, the trees, the rolling hills, all of it.

As for wildlife, we had it all. The place was called Hawk's Nest, but I didn't see any hawks. This is not to say I wasn't scared by the wildlife. Quite the opposite. Several times I would go off into the woods in a vain effort to find my ball - only to be scared shitless by some scurrying chipmunk at my feet. Ugh.

We also saw goldfish, a giant goldfish (Orca of the ponds), frogs, tadpoles, butterflies, the aforementioned moths and beetles, and caterpillars. Oh, and this badger thing that was basically the size of Godzilla. Yeah, I think it ate my ball.

And we got to see all of this the way God intended - on a nice manicured lawn in the middle of it all, easily avoided entanglements, cuts, bruises and near death experiences associated with most hikes I've been on.