Essex Country Club in Vermont

Denny and I are getting ever closer to checking off the final few states in our quest to play golf in all 50 states of the U.S. This week we played at the Essex Country Club in Essex Junction, Vermont, about 20 minutes from Burlington, Vermont and about 45 minutes away from our campground in Shelburne, Vermont.The golf course is an interesting mix of what Denny and I call cow pasture golf (open, flat, very young trees, no interesting physical features to the layout) to hilly holes with narrower fairways and tall trees and deep woods to snatch your balls. There were several players walking the course, but slower players allowed others to play through. The rates on a Tuesday were reasonable for us as it was Senior Day so we paid $22 each for green fees and then $34 shared fee for the cart. There is also a Men's day and a Ladies' Day with similar special deals. The course itself from the blue tees is 6545 yards long, from the white tees it is 6045 yards long. The rating/slope is the same for both sets of tees; 70.4/121. For the red tees the yardage is 5350 with a rating/slope of 65.8/111.Despite obvious signs of recent prolonged and heavy rains the course was in fairly good shape. Members and players appear to repair their divots and ball marks on the greens and the maintenance crews were out working on the course as we played. There are a couple of creeks that criss-cross a few of the holes and a couple of ponds as well as scattered sand traps but somehow Denny and I managed to stay out of most of these (okay, okay, I did lose a ball to one of the ponds.) I was a bit put off by the fact that several of the red (women's) tees were simply tee box markers in the fairway instead of a dedicated tee box because you have no idea of the proper yardage from the temporary tee boxes.

We had rain threatening us the entire round which took away from the view of the distant Green Mountains but on a clear day I imagine the views of the mountains from the seventeenth and eighteenth holes are gorgeous.Huge granite boulders along the fairway reminded us of a golf course we played eleven years ago in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. All in all, playing golf here was an enjoyable experience and we would play this golf course again.