{"id":1544,"date":"2014-05-11T16:32:16","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T23:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/?p=1544"},"modified":"2024-09-28T14:48:38","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T22:48:38","slug":"extreme-golf-and-more-extreme-camping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/extreme-golf-and-more-extreme-camping\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme Golf and More Extreme Camping"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my previous post, Brandee and I have a busy Summer 2014 planned<\/a>; and Summer is still one and a half months away!\u00a0 However, it got off to a great start this past week and weekend.<\/p>\n

\"LaCosta\"<\/a>
Omni La Costa Resort<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fun started when I made a business trip starting this past Sunday to the luxurious Omni La Costa Resort<\/a> in beautiful Carlsbad, California.\u00a0 The schedule was to include three straight days of golfing on world-class golf courses.\u00a0 While I do like golfing every-so-often I admittedly get bored quickly, become lazy with my shots and generally don\u2019t enjoy myself after playing so many consecutive days but these three rounds were different.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Golf \u2013 and a lot of it!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"aviara<\/a>
Aviara Golf Club – 14th Hole<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first golf round we enjoyed was Aviara Golf Club<\/a> which was a short drive from our hotel.\u00a0 Aviara is quite famous in the golf circuit for hosting the recent Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Kia Classic in March 2014.\u00a0 This is an extreme high-quality golf course which takes enormous skills to play.\u00a0 The course was full of beautiful scenery with wonderful waterfalls on many holes.\u00a0 The putting greens were insanely impossible because they were too fast to stop the ball and every putt had difficult twists and turns to navigate.\u00a0 Aviara was fun but I\u2019m glad we only played it the one day or else I would have lost all my golf balls and not had any for the rest of the week! :-)<\/p>\n

\"aviara<\/a>
Aviara Golf Club<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next two days we played golf at La Costa.\u00a0 They have two courses.\u00a0 One is the Champions Course and the other is the Legends Course.\u00a0 The first of the two days playing the La Costa courses was on the Champions Course.\u00a0 I think I played fairly decent and ended up shooting a 105 score which is about my average however this course was much more challenging than what I typically play.\u00a0 So, not too bad all-things considered.<\/p>\n

\"lacosta<\/a> \"omni<\/a><\/p>\n

Day two of playing the La Costa courses was on the Legends Course and this was a \u2018best ball\u2019, \u2018scramble\u2019-type format.\u00a0 Instead of everyone playing their own golf ball for each whole, the group of four all takes a shot and then everyone plays from whatever the best shot the group likes.\u00a0 This is a really fun format of golf to play.\u00a0 It makes the round go quicker and everyone gets a chance to contribute.\u00a0 Personally, I sincerely enjoyed my group because we all did truly contribute equally so it wasn\u2019t one person doing all the work.\u00a0 Also, and I can say without any doubt what-so-ever, we talked the most trash of any other group so if there were a prize for that we would have certainly won!<\/p>\n

Kick-off to Camping 2014!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"camping<\/a>
Henry Cowell State Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So after a full week of golfing, socializing and participating in various events what is probably the dumbest thing one could do?\u00a0 Go immediately camping, of course!<\/p>\n

A fellow colleague had planned the years first camping trip to Henry Cowell State Park<\/a> in the Santa Cruz Mountains starting on the Friday that I was returning from my business trip.\u00a0 Brandee and I had so much fun camping with these same people last year that I committed to going although I knew I would be tired.\u00a0 No Rest for the Wicked I reckon.<\/p>\n

Brandee picked me up from the airport at around noon.\u00a0 She, as usual, had everything perfectly prepared so we loaded up the car, put Jack in the back seat and off we were by 1:30pm.\u00a0 How is that for a quick turn around?<\/p>\n

\"jack<\/a>
Jack admiring Brandee in her Tinkerbelle PJ’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We arrived at the camp site first and had everything setup within an hour.\u00a0 Around 4pm or so it started to get a bit chilly and windy.\u00a0 Since, when we left San Jose, the weather was so warm and nice that both Brandee and I were dressed in t-shirts and shorts.\u00a0 We started a fire and got out some snacks to relax and wait for our friends to show up at the camp site.\u00a0 As the weather got cooler the conversation turned to adding a layer of clothing or getting some jackets.\u00a0 That\u2019s when the reality of our camping challenges for the first trip of the year started to set-in.\u00a0 Little did we know it would get much worse.<\/p>\n

You see with so much activity through-out the week I just hadn\u2019t really considered how cool it may get in the Santa Cruz Mountains.\u00a0 Brandee asked explicitly if we should bring jackets and warm clothes and I laughed it off as crazy because we had been experiencing 80-90 temperatures.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless we were determined to be troopers and tough-it-out.\u00a0 Our fellow campers showed up in the early evening and we had a pleasant chat around our campfire.\u00a0 Them in their warm jackets with hoodies, myself in shorts and a t-shirt with Brandee in her t-shirt and Tinkerbelle pajamas!\u00a0 Brandee and I were nearly in the fire itself trying to heat out bodies.\u00a0 We were as close as could be without getting burned.\u00a0 After the nice chat with our friends it was time to head to the tent in the hopes that snuggling under the blankets would provide some relief from the cold.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t work out too well.<\/p>\n

After several hours of Brandee, Jack and I snuggling as close as could be on the cold air-mattress, with few blankets in the 41 degree temperatures we all finally had to go to the restroom.\u00a0 It was around 5am and pitch dark.\u00a0 The restroom was a little bit of a hike so we decided to take my car for the short drive.\u00a0 Immediately on entering the car we cranked up the heat.\u00a0 Game-over for heading back to the tent!\u00a0 After defrosting for a bit we were so warm in the car there was not a chance that we were ever going back into the freezing tent.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/a>
Jack Tired – He’s Out<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was still too early and dark to clean up our camping equipment and head home so Brandee, I, and even Jack, made the obvious decision that upon daybreak we would breakdown camp and head home.\u00a0 We felt horrible that we couldn\u2019t explain the situation to our fellow campers before we left but they must surely have understood the circumstances.\u00a0 We stayed in the car, with the heat on, until the sun started to rise around 5:45am.\u00a0 Needless to say by 6am we were completely done dismantling the camp site and on our way home.\u00a0 Overall it was another fun, albeit short, camping experience.\u00a0 We will right this one off as \u2018preseason preparation\u2019 for the real upcoming Summer Camping 2014 Season.<\/p>\n

Looking forward to the next camping trip with our friends!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my previous post, Brandee and I have a busy Summer 2014 planned; and Summer is still one and a half months away!\u00a0 However, it got off to a great start this past week and weekend. The fun started when I made a business trip starting this past Sunday to the luxurious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[441,92,4,105],"tags":[443,444,442],"class_list":["post-1544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camping-2","category-friends","category-life_and_family","category-travel","tag-aviara","tag-henry-cowell","tag-la-costa"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",2592,1936,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch-300x224.jpg",300,224,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",768,574,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch-1024x764.jpg",980,731,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",1536,1147,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",2048,1530,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",210,157,false],"coral-dark-medium-large-2x":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",1536,1147,false],"coral-dark-large-2x":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/omni-lacosta-orange-flowers-with-butch.jpg",1960,1464,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"As I mentioned in my previous post, Brandee and I have a busy Summer 2014 planned; and Summer is still one and a half months away!\u00a0 However, it got off to a great start this past week and weekend. The fun started when I made a business trip starting this past Sunday to the luxurious…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1544"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13571,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions\/13571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}