More golf - Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail

The Shoals - Schoolmaster

This is the other course at The Shoals, along with Fighting Joe.  The Schoolmaster is Woodrow Wilson, after whom the nearby Wilson Lake and Wilson dam on the Tennessee River is named.  It's the shorter of the two, at only 7971 yards.

Like all the Trail courses, it is in great condition, and has a variety of interesting holes and shots.

And the patio overlooking the river.

More pictures.

Silver Lakes

This one has three nines, named Mindbreaker, Backbreaker, and Heartbreaker.  Repeating myself, these all live up to the RTJ Trail standards of excellence.

More pictures.

Capitol Hill

This location has three courses:  Legislator, Senator, and Judge.  I played the Senator and Judge before, came back this year for the last one, and to play Senator again, the links-style course, because it kicked my butt the first time.  I must be hitting a lot straighter now, because I scored much better and only lost a couple of balls in the waist-high grass on the mounds that line most of the fairways.

There's a magnificent clubhouse, as usual

The LPGA plays the Senator course.  They say "The Senator, a Scottish-Links style course with beautifully manicured Champion greens, holds over 160 pot-hole bunkers and mounds 20 to 40 feet in height to create a secluded setting for each hole." 

The signature hole is the 18th, a dogleg par 5 with water in play twice.

More Senator pictures.

The first tee on the judge

an island green

lots of holes along the Alabama river

And some unusually-shaped bunkers

More Judge pictures.

The Legislator is a mixture of mounds, trees, water and sand.

And swamp

Some guys I played with were renting this house

I was going to 15 when they blew the siren for a thunderstorm.  I waited it out in the shelter of the "comfort station" and finished the round.

More Legislator pictures.

Hampton Cove

The clubhouse:

The River course has no bunkers, but 16 holes with water in play.

More pictures.

The Highlands Course has a little of everything - or a lot - hills, mounds, trees, water, sand, even railroad ties.  And, of course, all up to the excellent standards of the RTJ Trail.

More pictures.

Oh, and more Prattville, sort of.  If you like cajun, but don't have a cajun chef in the neighborhood, try Tony Chachere's Gumbo mix and Jambalaya mix, from the supermarket.  You add your own shrimp, chicken, andouille sausage (you can't get good crawfish at Safeway anymore).  Maybe it's not exactly like being in New Orleans, but it's very good and the travel expenses are way lower.

Prattville

Prattville, Alabama is an interesting enough place to overcome my blogging inertia.  One of the more enjoyable things about this lifestyle is finding out-of-the-way places with unique features, and this is one.

We stopped here because of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course here, and the owner of the park where we stayed told us about Uncle Mick's, the best restaurant in Prattville.  Not just his opinion, the Internet said so, too, 3 years in a row.

You get your tray and enter the cafeteria-style line.  We were greeted by Uncle Mick himself, who is the chef and was serving the food.  He asked "What did you have last time?", and when we told him it was our first time he gave us samples of everything.

I'm calling it the best Cajun outside New Orleans.

Prattville was founded by Daniel Pratt, who was from New Hampshire and chose the site because it reminded him of home.

It's called the Fountain City because they've built fountains over the Artesian wells here.

And we saw an unusual car

More pictures.