Willamette Park
If you peruse this blog, you will notice that most of the courses are not golf courses, but disc golf courses. I played golf in high school but haven’t shot a round since 2016. Lately it is disc golf that I keep up with, typically playing a handful of times in a year.
The exception to this is when I lived in Oregon. For some reason I kept the discs on the shelf and did not play at all in the Portland or Corvallis area (at least that I can remember). However, Rita and I recently went back to Corvallis so she could defend her PHD thesis. Regarding that, she passed with flying colors. Her reward from her lab group was the ceremonial rainbow dyed lab coat that is passed from one PHD graduate to the next. In addition to supporting her, I also took some time to disc golf at Willamette Park.
Willamette Park is quite large and right on the banks of the Willamette River. On the day I decided to go it was rainy, even downpouring at times. This was not new; the weather had been like that for a while. The river as a result was fast and dirty, probably approaching flood stage. The park wasn’t at risk of flooding, but in any case, it made for a very wet round.
Blame it on the rain
I took our dog Toad along, so that Rita could focus on her defense preparations. Toad is a resilient bulldog, but he does not like rain. I made efforts to keep him comfortable, putting on his raincoat and staying under tree cover when I could. He managed to enjoy himself at times, sniffing around in the grass and watching people go by. Still, he often gave me a grumpy face and pulled in the direction of the car.
The park is a mixture of wide-open spaces and light woods. This makes for what should be a relatively easy course. Even so, I managed to hit just about every tree that poked its limbs onto the course. There is no real water hazard given that the course stays far enough from the river. However, in the wet conditions there were a few upstart forest bogs, but even those tended to be pretty far from the holes.
Based on the distance of the first hole I played, I assumed everything was a par 4 and kept score in my head based on +/- par. I also only used two discs, “Cyclone” for long range and “Wombat” for everything else. When I finished, I found the sign with course information and learned that every hole was actually a par 3. That put a big of a damper on my round, turning the +7 into +25. If there’s one improvement I could make to my game, it’s getting that first drive way out there.
Where the beavers hang out
Willamette Park allows dogs off leash. I kept Toad on a leash, attached to my belt, since I wanted to be playing disc golf, not chasing him. I saw a small group of people letting their dogs run around but given all the dreary weather most people stayed home. In fact, I only saw one other person playing disc golf the whole time I was there. On busier days, I’d imagine there might be instances where disc golfers need to run after dogs to get their discs back.
The highlight of the course was probably the little door covering a hole in the bottom of a tree. I didn’t knock to see who was home, and couldn’t tell you if it was squirrels or crows that owned the place. Given that I was near the campus of Oregon State University, it was probably a family of beavers. That being said, I wonder how they kept their instincts to chop down the tree down in check.
Corvallis is the best place I have ever lived. It’s got a fun and historic downtown by the river, it’s an hour from the Pacific Ocean, and two hours from the majestic peaks of the Cascades. Mary’s Peak, the tallest in the Coast Range, looms only 20 miles away. Indy movies can be viewed at the classic Darkside Cinema, and craft beer can be found at the Lord of the Rings, Ent themed Treebeard’s Taphouse. So, of course it has a beautiful disc golf course along the banks of the Willamette River.
