A round of golf this past Monday in rural Vermont was a good reminder that a golfing lifestyle does not always mean life in a planned golf community. While visiting our daughter in St. Albans, VT, just 20 minutes from the Canadian border, my son in law and I played the circa 1920 classic layout at Champlain Country Club in nearby Swanton. The course is short – just under 6,300 yards from the tips – but sporty and fun, with a few extremely challenging holes (two par 3s stand out). I have played the golf course at least a half dozen times over the last five years, but Monday was the first time I focused on the view from behind the 8th green. Out there in the distance, just off the edge of the country club property, were a couple of homes. A little bit of online research after the round indicated they are part of Country Club Estates, with homes built in the 1980s and ‘90s.
        This is a reminder for those who don’t require the built-in amenities of a golf community – and who are reluctant to pay the homeowner association dues that come with those amenities – that you can find some very good deals close to counbtry clubs you can join in a more organically developed neighborhood. In Champlain Country Club’s case, it is one of those deals, with membership fees that will seem a bargain to anyone living in a planned community with a private or semi-private club.
Champlain from 8th green with housesFrom behind the 8th green at Champlain Country Club in Swanton, VT, homes in Country Club Estates dot the horizon.
        Currently, for those of us in the “Pre-Golden Years” category (70 to 74), annual membership is set at $881; with a weekday rack rate of $40, the membership pays for itself beginning with round 23. If you have made it to 75 and play golf twice a week, the annual fee of just $671 is a special bargain. (Other adults up to the age of 70 pay $1,128 per year, still quite a deal if you play a few times a week in the April to November season.) What I was impressed with especially, from a cost perspective, was that you can rent a golf cart for the year for just $448 (for a single seat) or $757 for a full cart. That single seat cart pays for itself by the 22nd round.
        The adjacent community of Country Club Estates is home to a couple dozen houses, none of which appear to be on the market currently. Last May, a 3-bedroom, 2-bath “executive ranch” home with 2,240 square feet sold for $365,000.  Assuming future homes that come on the market are priced similarly, a summer home in Vermont -- which, by the way, has one of the lowest per capita rates of Covid infections in the U.S. -- could pair nicely with a winter home in the South, providing comfortable year-round golf.
        I'll have a little more to say about the Champlain Country Club golf course soon at OffTheBeatenCartPath.com, our companion site which features some out of the way gems.
        

        As if the pandemic was not enough challenge for Connecticut golf courses, the remnants of a hurricane with a confusing name slammed into the heart of the state taking down trees and power lines and making life even more miserable for a week.  Your correspondent and his wife were without power for five days.
        Taking a cue from the besieged U.S. Postal Service, neither downed trees nor power lines nor 90-degree weather was going to keep me from playing golf even before the power was turned back on.  My friend Peter and I booked an afternoon tee time at Wintonbury Hills, a Pete Dye course in Bloomfield, CT, that plays through gently sloped fairways of a former farm.  Dye "donated" his design services to Bloomfield in the early 2000s, and the course still ranks as one of the best of the public options in northern Connecticut.  Power was out at Wintonbury, and I was warned that my electric cart could run out of juice by the end of the round. (Thankfully, it didn't.)
        Having driven around my home town shortly after the storm passed, I noted that many of the larger downed trees were cleaved almost in half, from top to bottom. The worst damage seemed to be in small, separated areas, implying to this armchair meteorologist that mini-tornadoes may have been spawed by the storm.  At Wintonbury, I noted that a few medium-sized trees had been toppled but mostly small trees and limbs were down on the course -- until we came to number 14, where a huge tree covered half the fairway. I hit my best drive of the day almost to the tree but was able to play over the newly formed hazard.
Wintonbury14downedtreeAn extra hazard in the 14th fairway at Wintonbury Hills in Bloomfield, CT.
        My favorite public course in Connecticut, Keney Park in Hartford, had no such luck.  Closed for five days because of a lack of power and many downed trees, I played there on Thursday this week and was stunned at how many large trees had been felled by the storm.  The crews had done a great job of removing those that had blocked play and pushing aside many of the others for later cleanup.
Keneytreeblockingshotto7Only twice was a downed tree or branch in play for me at Keney Park this week; here, for my approach shot on #7 (I played it), and on #10, where my tee shot on the par 5 wound up in a pile of brush at the edge of the fairway. (I took a drop.)
       We think that hurricanes and the ensuing damage is an issue only for coastal locations in the Carolinas and Florida, but those of us in New England have lived through some challenging post-hurricane effects in recent years.  (Irene inundated a large swath of Vermont and New Hampshire in late August 2011.)  If you are looking forward to life near a beach in the Carolinas, then go for it.  No place is perfect in terms of climate -- well, some people say San Diego is but, oh, the cost of living! To quote the worldly philosopher of Saturday Night Live fame, Roseann Roseannadanna (Gilda Radner), "It's always something."

Keneytreedamagebehind1
Keney downed treesTop, tree damage behind the first green at Keney Park. Bottom, a sample of the scene on much of the front nine. Oddly, the back nine was largely unaffected.