Lilliputt Golf

Dear Aunt Peg:

Mom says that this course has been in Grand Lake for a really long time.  But if you Google minigolf in Grand Lake, this doesn’t come up!  You can find it on Google if you already know the name of the course, but just by Googling minigolf in Grand Lake, just the course in Winter Park comes up (along with the 2 courses in Estes Park).  She says that’s a real shame because this is a great course.  If you know the name of the course, you can find someone’s blog who mentions it, but this course has NO web-presence of its own!  You just have to know that it’s there!

 
This is a course where all the holes have names.   I love that.  And it is a course that won a “Mechanix Illustrated” award in 1977.  Mechanix Illustrated was a magazine that was published from 1928 to 2001.  See, they say so in their sign.

 
This golf course has a “wild west” theme, and contains a shooting gallery!  The course, basically, takes up three store fronts on the block - it’s really small.  Two of the store fronts are golf, and the third is the shooting gallery.  Which, we didn’t see anyone using.

  
Hey, I love that sign for the pricing for “children shorter than the counter”.    And I love that the sign is low, too.

 
They have really impressive course records.  But, the holes are relatively short, and it’s a felt course, so it’s not so hard to get a good score.  

 
They had a good selection of balls - but too many yellow ones!

 
Oooooh, they’ve got my favorite kind of putters.

 
This is an old course, you could tell, because the minute we stepped on the course, hole #3 broke down and the lady behind the counter had to come out and do some quick repairs with a can of WD-40 and a screw-driver.

  
Look!!!  A 5 stroke limit!!!

This course has beach umbrellas sprinkled around the course, which was nice, because we played right after lunch, and the sun was very strong.  Also, we were playing behind some really slow people, so we had to wait a lot.

This hole had a wrecking ball dipping in and out of the hole, meaning that you had to time your shot.

  
Look!!  There aren’t any SIDES to this hole!!  Man!!!

Apparently this course is fun.

  
HA!!!!!

Another Farmville hole.  The barn door swings open and shut.

 
This is hole number 3 - the policeman rotates clockwise, only he got stuck so he was blocking forward progress.  That's why the lady had to fix him.

 
"Here the fun never sets."  That seems to be their slogan.

 
This is the strangest hole I’ve ever seen!  You had to tee up your ball on that little piece of felt on the wood thing, and then putt through Big Bertha.  And, this photo also shows how they’ve used space efficiently - Big Bertha goes OVER the next hole!

 
This hole also had something I’d never seen:  you take a one-stroke penalty if you hit the chimes!

 
Was this plant meant to be part of this hole?

  
Look at this goofy castle!!  It looks like someone’s FACE!!!  

 
 

This spider lowered down and covered the hole.

 
I got a hole-in-one on this hole, because it reminded me of the Indianapolis Colts, and you should always get a hole-in-one on the hole of your favorite team!

  
SHEESH!!!

This is apparently the NBC hole.

  
HA!!!  You know, if I owned this course I might try re-painting that sign.

You were supposed to hit your ball hard enough that you get into the gutter, and then you’d roll down by the hole.  See, you have to putt off a cliff.

 
I wonder how many children hit the ball so hard that it bounces back and knocks them over???

This hole had you putt into a mixing bowl!  Seriously, it was the largest hole I’ve ever seen!  Once you got into the mixing bowl, you’d come out by the actual hole on the green.

 
This was the smallest “ant-hill” I’ve ever seen!

 

 

And it’s way larger than a regulation-sized hole!!

Here the rocket goes up and down.

 
This one had a monkey going up and down over the hole, but there are hills on both sides of the monkey, which made the hole really challenging.

 

 
The first and only water hole - although there wasn’t any water, only paint.  There may have been water in there at some point, but there wasn’t any when we were there.

 

East 18:
Par:  44
Aaron:  47
Barb:  42

There was also a second half to this course, the "West 18," but it was largely the same as the East 18. It had some unique holes, but the highlight was definitely the second hole. I took a video of it that you can watch by clicking the link below.


Click me to see the video



West 18:
Par: 44
Aaron: 47
Barb: 47

Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult):  3 putts
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous):  8 balls.    This course had extremely fast greens.  It’s possible that they weren’t felt, they were just really smashed down astro-turf.

Coming soon:  The End of the Tour - for this year!!

Cascade Creek Mini-Golf

Dear Aunt Peg, 

This course is right near Lake Estes, as you’re coming into town from the Big Thompson Canyon.  There are two courses here, the Mountain and the Meadows courses.  

You can play both courses for $12.00, or one course for $7.00.  But, look at this, non-playing golf guests are $1.00, and toddlers with plastic putters are $2.00.

 

WHAT?!?!?  Who ARE these non-playing golf guests????  If they’re not toddlers, who are they???? 

And, like a lot of courses in tourist areas, you can pay for two courses, but play them on two different days.

 
They had a practice green - astro-turf.  OK quality.  They also had water falls.

And they’re not BLUE!!!  That looks lovely!!

We played the Meadows course.  The fairways all had brick sides, but they weren’t particularly bouncy.  The fairways were really lumpy - they were long and hilly.  Dad liked how they put this fake rock here to house the light fixture.

 
 

I always like when they have fake rocks that have speakers.  That just makes me laugh.   Yep, this looks like a lot of long and lumpy holes.

Mom liked the score-card holders.   She also thought it was really interesting how, even the sidewalks were lumpy at this course!  They had speed bumps on all the sidewalks!  It was like they couldn’t figure out how to make the greens lumpy without making the sidewalk lumpy too.

 

Weird.

This course had a lot of signs telling you what not to do.  This is why we took whatever liberties we could think of.

 
In this course, the variation between holes is just the variation in lumps!

Look at the lovely scenery!!!

 
This hole had a gap, like some we’d seen.  But you could also just putt around the gap, which I found odd.

 

I think it looks like a sleeping face!!!
 
Look!!  Aaron is getting really good at capturing images of balls in mid-air!!!

 

Man, that is a really skinny fairway!!!  (Barb just told me that this is a hole where you could actually go out into the river and get washed back onto the green.  Aaron and Paul got holes-in-ones on this hole by putting into the water.)

 
This isn’t really sand.  It’s just a textured rubber mat.

 
This is the first hole that I think was meant to look like something.  It’s easier to see on the drawing of the hole - it looks like a sea-monster!!

WAY cool!!!

I think this was supposed to look like a guy who had just had brain surgery.

 



WHOA!!!  Maybe it’s a guy wearing a yarmulke!!!

Here’s a close-up of the lumpy sidewalk.

 
Those black things are, like, non-slip strips for the bath-tubs of the elderly!
 
Dad has a weird putting style - I told him he was choking up too much, but he liked his style.

 
This was the only multi-tiered hole on the course.

OOoooooh!!!  Look at the cool cave!!!!!  With train tracks!!!

 
Dad was amazed that there was no “keep off the tracks” sign, so he stepped on them!

 
This was the ball-return hole.  The elevated hole gives you a hole-in-one on your score card and a free game, but if you went in one of the other holes you got a 2.  You started by putting through the logs.

 

Par:  40
Aaron:  42
Barb:  47
Paul:  50

Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult):  2.5 putts
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous):  8 balls.   It was a really interesting course - I think it would be hard for little kids on account of all the really long and lumpy holes.

Coming soon:  Lilliputt Golf in Grand Lake, Colorado