| Day 42 - Friday, September 30 - Nevada | << Index |
| Anticipated: Play golf at White Pine Golf Course in Ely, Nevada. |
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| Click on the photos below to enlarge | ||
 White Pine Golf Course sign |
 (top) Randy Long, Professional and General Manager, (middle) Randy and his wife Lori, (bottom) First Tee sign |
 Scenes of the golf course |
 Traffic scene in Las Vegas, the strip casinos on the left |
 Randy Long, John Polish (88), and Bob Trombley (84) |
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The golf course was a good layout and quite flat since it is completely surrounded by the Nevada desert. As can be seen from the pictures, there were mountains in the distance. The course was in good condition; however, they were aerating several of the holes, but that is to be expected at this time of the year. We have been playing courses of about 6000 yards (men’s tees), but this was 6562 yards, which is long. There were several par 4s over 400 yards which makes them difficult to reach in two shots (Jim). We certainly enjoyed the course and are glad that we had the opportunity to play it. Jim shot 88 (yardage = 6562) and Pat shot 113 (yardage = 5285).
After golf we met two long-time members of White Pine, John Polish is 88 years of age, and Bob Trombley is 84. They both gave us some history of this area of northern Nevada. They both play golf every day. They knew we were coming because Randy had our itinerary posted on the bulletin board. John apologized to Pat. Understandably he thought it was two men who were attempting this golf marathon (he mistakenly thought that “Pat” was a male name). It turns out that Bob was from Laingsburg, Michigan and went to high school there and then to college at Western Michigan in Kalamazoo. Laingsburg is only 20 miles from Lansing, which is Jim’s hometown. They both reminisced about the “old days” in the Lansing area. Both John and Bob were very interesting people.
Before leaving the course, Randy continued his hospitality by inviting us to a delicious lunch, which was also nice because we could have more conversation. On day 38 we played Plentywood Golf Course in Plentywood, Montana (refer to Day 38 on this website). Plentywood, MT is the hometown of Randy and his wife Lori. Randy learned to play golf on Plentywood Golf Course. The odds of us choosing a course in a small town in Montana and a small town in Nevada which both are associated with Randy are astronomical. Just before we left we were fortunate to meet Lori Long. The Longs have 12-year old twins (boy and girl) and a 4-year old daughter. It was a pleasure to meet the Longs and we are thankful for their hospitality and courtesy. We would also like to thank them for “comping” us for the golf and lunch.
We left Ely at 12:30PM for Needles, California for our 43rd day of golf tomorrow. Our route took us south through Las Vegas and then straight south on US95 to Needles. Unfortunately we hit Las Vegas at rush hour, which slowed us down somewhat.
We also ran into a “glitch” (the first one in the 42 days so far), which has caused us to modify our California plans. We called Needles Golf Course on the cell phone from Las Vegas to check the status for tomorrow’s tee time. Bad news: they were aerating the course and it will be closed until next week. We had been warned of this possibility by the golf pro, J.C. Bacon in an email, but we decided to take our chances. We gambled and lost. The nearest course to Needles is Blythe, CA – another 97 miles south on US95. We had no choice but to continue south to Blythe where we arrived at our motel at 8:30PM. This wasn’t too bad, but it meant another 13-hour day. Another negative is that we’ll have to back track over the 97 miles tomorrow giving us a 500-mile drive after golf (and another 13-hour day). We’re not looking for sympathy – nobody said we had to do this! An interesting sideline – we entered the US from Canada on US95 on Tuesday, and here we are almost on the Mexican border (about 100 miles short) on Friday.