Last Thursday, the
Lovely Sharon and I drove to Monticello, Utah a town of less than 2,000 souls
located in southeastern Utah not far from the Colorado border. The purpose of our trip was to play “The
Hideout Golf Club”. We arrived late
afternoon on Thursday, the day before our Friday tee time at The Hideout. The
City of Monticello was named after Thomas Jefferson’s estate in Virginia. However, the Utah Monticello is pronounced
“monti – sello” while Jefferson’s estate is pronounced “monti-chello”. You would think if we Utahans stole the name
from somewhere else, we would at least pronounce it the same. But no, we do our
own thing here. We pronounce creek as
“crick” not “creek”.
The Monticello area was settled in July 1887 by pioneers from Mormon Church. Monticello
became the San Juan county seat in 1895 and was incorporated as a city in 1910. Monticello is located at 6,800 feet
elevation at the base of the Abajo Mountains (also called “Blue Mountain”) on
the Colorado Plateau.
Monticello is a small
but beautiful town. I have wanted to
play The Hideout Course for 5 or 6 years but it never fit into our schedule. I first learned the golf course from friends
Denny and Carma and Norm and Terri. They have traveled to the area together and
Denny and Carma have been there several times.
The golf course was opened
in 2002 in connection a federal government major reclamation project involving
the former site of a uranium mine and mill, dismantled in the 1960s by the
United States Department of Energy. The only directive of the Department was
that the reclaimed land be vegetated and protected from erosion, and a golf
course fit that bill. The Hideout Golf
Club occupies land across from the former mill, with the work to build the
course involving restoration of the old mill site land into a natural, open
space park.
In 2010, Golfweek
magazine ranked the course as number 24 in the nation for municipal golf
courses. I loved the golf course. It was
absolutely beautiful and great fun to play.
I hope I can get back to Monticello in the future for another round of
golf.
After our Friday
round of golf, the Lovely Sharon and I headed to Dove Creek, Colorado, up to
Telluride, then Montrose and finally into Grand Junction Colorado. We spent Friday and Saturday nights in Grand
Junction and played the Redlands Mesa golf course Saturday morning.
The Lovely Sharon
did all of the work getting our hotel rooms and tee times. She did a great job and it was a fun,
romantic road trip. Here are some photos I took of The Hideout Course:
Nice shot of the Abajo Mountains
No. 4 - par 4
Blue Mountain
No. 7 - Par 3
A downhill hole
A deer on the course
My dear on the course
No. 13 - Par 5
We had a wonderful weekend adventure.
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