T&L Golf, 7/07

High Plains Drifter
On a family trip to North Dakota, a minivan-driving dad finds his way to three first-class links
From July 2007
by Roland Merullo

Whenever I mentioned that my wife, two young daughters and I were planning a summer trip to North Dakota, the response was always the same: "Why?"

"Family vacation," I'd reply, but the truth was more complicated. Without ever having seen North Dakota, I'd developed a strange obsession with it, building it up in my imagination until it became a stark, mystical kingdom, part Wild West and part Midwest, empty prairie, Indian reservations and the ghosts of millions of slaughtered buffalo. I wanted, finally, to see it. I wanted to show its certain beauties to my family. And I wanted to play golf there, not least because three of the best courses in the state can be played for one fee of $135.

In the first week of August, we flew from our home in Massachusetts to Chicago, rented a minivan and lit out for the territory of the imagination. According to my research, these three packaged courses—Hawktree, Bully Pulpit and the Links of North Dakota—enjoy national renown and stunningly low greens fees. They are situated along an L-shape route that would take us from Bismarck to the Badlands near the Montana border and then up to the northwestern corner of the state. Something odd happens when you head west from Bismarck. For the first few hours the land is pretty much what you've gotten used to this side of the friendly state capital. Then you crest a hill and suddenly find yourself in a sandstone wonderland reminiscent of the Grand Canyon (minus the Colorado River): mile upon mile of startling buttes, dry canyons and cliffsides striped in sienna, rust and lilac.

Amid all this natural beauty we found the touristy town of Medora, where Theodore Roosevelt developed his love for the West. Medora has wooden sidewalks, sandstone formations so close you feel you can touch them, a superb miniature golf course and a log cabin said to have belonged to TR, which was where we bunked for a night in spare comfort. From there we drove a quarter mile to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The girls were thrilled to see wild horses a few feet from the car, a solitary bison, deer, rabbits, hawks and two prairie-dog burrows (or towns, as they're called), from which the little guys emerged to rear up and bark their lungs out at us.

The crown jewel of Medora is Bully Pulpit Golf Course, a three-year-old Michael Hurdzan design. So on our second day in town it was Mom and the girls off horseback riding and Dad off to the course. The front nine is challenging and picturesque, with inventive bunker placement, wide-open holes lined by buckbrush and sage, and the occasional kingfisher diving about. The back nine brings you right into the Badlands, earning the course its name. The fifteenth hole, for example, is a tyrannical par three played from hilltop to hilltop, usually with a two- or three-club wind blowing from right to left. Miss short, long, left or right and you're dead.

North Dakota had been enduring what one native called the worst drought since the "dirty thirties," but Bully Pulpit remained in fine shape. Harry, the course's octogenarian starter, heartily welcomed me, and a ranger named Bud filled me in on bull snakes (not venomous) and prairie rattlers ("'bout so big," he said as he spread his arms to five feet, "but, you know, they have to be coiled to strike"). Fortunately, I encountered neither.

Next we headed northwest, through cavorting, barren terrain that changed subtly every ten miles or so. The landscape was two-lane highways, pickups going eighty-five, towns of three buildings, mile-long freight trains, oil pumps working on either side of the road, hawks on hay bales and weathered farmhouses set miles apart. It was all alien to my eyes, as if a drier, vaster, emptier beauty had just been invented and was being offered for our consideration.

I was intent on playing the Links of North Dakota, a highly touted decade-old Stephen Kay design half an hour outside of Williston. Because the hotel offerings in this small city seemed uninspired, we stayed the night at a winsome B&B in the tiny town of Arnegard called the Old School, a converted schoolhouse built in 1915.

While my wife, Amanda, was getting our girls ready for bed, I stepped across the back lot to a biker bar, Horses and Babes, where a friendly woman on a stool announced "incoming" when she saw me walk through the door. I ordered a double vodka on the rocks, and Jack the bartender (who had parked his Harley in the middle of the room) offered me a few slices of venison sausage and a bag of saltines. "You gotta put hot sauce on it," one of the leather-clad patrons insisted. I complied.

A day later, when I left for the Links before dawn, lightning flashed in the sky and the windshield crackled under a driving rain. I tried to be pleased for the farmers, but actually I was upset at my bad luck: One damn rainy day in the past four months and it's the day I arrive to play a fabulous course. Miraculously, the skies cleared. And thanks to the foul weather earlier in the day, I had the course to myself. Even struggling a bit with my game, I enjoyed the course immensely. It's full of rolling fairways, undulating greens and expansive views over Lake Sakakawea. Maybe it was the scarcity of golfers out there, but the course felt almost like sacred land. A diagonal sprinkling of bunkers complicated the uphill tee shot on number two; a horseshoe-shaped upper tier added intrigue to the green of the par-three eighth; and an expanse of wheat fields and prairie served as a spectacular backdrop on seventeen. Here was a true links—complete with pot bunkers and deep native rough—right in the middle of the American heartland.

I went back to the girls with a big smile on my face, and in the intervening days we availed ourselves of a few of the state's other entertainments: Native American museums, a musical in an outdoor amphitheater near Medora, and longer, faster water slides than any we'd ever seen.

At last, well baked by the high plains sun, we backtracked to Bismarck and the course I'd saved for last, Hawktree Golf Club. It's set in the Burnt Creek Valley, fifteen minutes north of the twenty-four-story state capitol (known as the Skyscraper of the Prairie), out where battle lines are being drawn between suburban McMansions and uncluttered ranchland. This Jim Engh design ranks as North Dakota's best, and with good reason. It's a magnificent layout of varied, intriguing holes, abundant elevation changes offering views out into the vastness and a sign near the clubhouse that warns beware of large badger holes in the mown native rough. The par-five tenth—one of eleven holes with water in play—begins with an exhilarating tee shot off a high perch to a fairway pinched by large bunkers. It is followed for most players by a layup in front of a creek and then a wedge into a tricky green.

As the day at Hawktree warmed, so did my playing partners, Chuck, John and Vern. When we stepped onto the tee of the long, uphill eighteenth, Chuck seconded my own emotions by confessing, "I'm getting a little sad now—this is the last hole." Driver, three-wood, wedge, two putts and, having played to my handicap for once, I bade the gentlemen goodbye and returned to the joys of family life.

I had managed to strike just the right balance between golf and family time, which, as every golfer knows, can be an elusive goal. The state that I'd long been dreaming of had repaid my fantasizing with world-class scenery and first-rate golf. I had lots of good memories in the bag—and at least three excellent reasons to counter my friends' puzzlement at our choice of vacation spots.

Playing
Hawktree Golf Club ****1/2
Architect: Jim Engh, 2000. Yardage: 7,085. Par: 72. Slope: 137. Greens Fee: $63. Contact: 701-355-0995, www.hawktree.com.
Bully Pulpit Golf Course ****
Architect: Michael Hurdzan, 2004. Yardage: 7,166. Par: 72. Slope: 138. Greens Fee: $50. Contact: 701-623-4653, www.medora.com.

Links of North Dakota ****
Architect: Stephen Kay, 1995. Yardage: 7,092. Par: 72. Slope: 128. Greens Fee: $60. Contact: 701-568-2600, www.thelinksofnorthdakota.com.

The Triple Challenge allows you to play one round each at Bully Pulpit, the Links of North Dakota and Hawktree for $135. Buy a punch card at any of the courses and be sure to play them in the same calendar year.

Staying
Hartfiel Inn, Dickinson; 701-225-6710, www.hartfielinn.com. Rooms: $79-$109.
Kay's B&B, Bismarck; 701-258-6877. Rooms: $85.
Old School B&B, Arnegard; 701-586-3595, www.oldschoolbb.com  Rooms: $85-$120.
Theodore Roosevelt's Cabin, Medora; 800-633-6721. Rooms: $185.

Dining
East 40 Chop House & Tavern (Steaks and chops), Bismarck; www.east40chophouse.com. $$$
Outlaws Bar & Grill (Steaks), Watford City; 701-842-6859. $$
Pirogue Grille (Regional), Bismarck; www.piroguegrille.com. $$$

Other Activities
Lewis and Clark Riverboat, www.lewisandclarkriverboat.com
Medora Riding Stables, www.medora.com.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park, www.nps.gov/thro