Honeymoonin’

Well I’m back. It was so great to take a break from “real life” and spend some quality time with my new wife among some of Michigan’s most beautiful landscapes. We spent our time near the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore in Empire. We took lots of little trips around the area doing various fun things like kayaking and even a little disc golf (yes, my wife rocks). There were lots of great wineries and food to be had. Here’s a quick glance at some of the highlights. It’s a little hard to get back to the everyday grind of things after such a wonderful trip but such is life.

 

funny picture of Christopher and Abby at the beach

sunset at Empire Beach

the happy couple posing next to lake michigan

Cherry Pie at The Cherry Hut

shadow of Abby and Christopher overlooking Lake Michigan

teeing off at the disc golf course

 

App Review: iDisc Golf Pro

As previously mentioned, I’m a new disc golfer. I’ve played everyday that I can. On Thursday and Friday I had planned to fit in a couple of rounds but the weather had other ideas. The pouring rain and cold didn’t seem like an ideal situation to play in so I went looking for a virtual disc golf experience. Enter iDisc Golf Pro. It’s a $0.99 app that replicates playing disc golf right on your iPhone or iPad.

iDisc Golf Pro Main Menu

I started by downloading the free lite version. It allows you to play three holes and by the second hole I knew it was worth the buck to play a full 18. You can play one or two players (it’s a local, pass the phone kind of two player) and there are blue and white tees for different skill levels.

There are six course to choose from, each with a unique locale and varying difficulty. They’ve done a nice job giving you a variety of landscapes. Wooded, beaches and even snowy courses are options. All of these are available at the start and as far as I can tell, there is no unlocking of content in this game. The graphics are 3D and reminiscent of a mid to late-90s computer game. They aren’t spectacular but they get the job done.

screenshot from iDisc Golf Pro

screenshot from iDisc Golf Pro

screenshot from iDisc Golf Pro

The game throwing is pretty simple. You cycle through your three disc choices—driver, mid or putter—and then touch the disc, swipe it up and release. Depending on what angle you swipe at the disc will behave slightly different, much like releases in real-life. I wish there were a few more disc choices. It’d be really cool to unlock other drivers that have ratings like real life discs to maximize power, distance, fade, etc. This would bring the game to a whole new level and increase its realism.

screenshot from iDisc Golf Pro

In my opinion, they’ve really missed an opportunity by not integrating with Game Center. I think a game like this is perfect for it. I’d like to see my best rounds on a leaderboard with my friends and most importantly, I’d love to see some achievements. Birdies, aces, finishing under par are all things that could easily lend themselves to the achievement system.

What is here, is a great little game. It’s fun, it replicates its real-life counterpart pretty well and there is enough variety to keep you coming back. Sure it could be improved but I’m just glad it exists and it’s affordable. It’s a disc golfer’s best friend on a rainy day. I hope the developers continue to work on iDisc Golf Pro and build on the great base game they’ve already created.

Disc Golf (My New Favorite Thing)

disc golf discs on a picnic table

This week I started playing disc golf. It’s amazing. I’ve fallen completely in love with it. It’s laid back and gets you out in nature with your friends. It doesn’t take forever to play like real golf and it’s certainly much cheaper. I always thought it sounded cool but for some reason I never managed to play until this week. I played three times in the first four days of my disc golf career. I can’t get enough of it.

Of course one of the first things I did was find an app and some websites to help learn the game and keep track of my stats. I’ve found Disc Golf Course Review to be absolutely indispensable. They’ve got a huge database of courses with loads of info on each and many with reviews. You can really get an idea of what to expect and where to find courses near you.

You can’t talk about disc golf without mentioning the Professional Disc Golf Association. They have a lot of great resources on their website too. You don’t have to be an official member to get access to them all either, which is very nice of them for us n00bs.

My Disc Golf Profile at Discasaurus - Mobile Disc Golf Scoring Application for iPhoneMy favorite find has to be Discasaurus. After searching around the web and reading reviews in the App Store, Discasaurus seemed like one of the best iPhone apps to keep score of your games. It has nice graphics and an easy to use interface, it syncs back to their website and best of all, it’s free. I think it’s a really cool app and community. I like being able to look back at my scores and this makes it easy while giving me a great way to actually record those scores on the course.

If you haven’t tried disc golf yet, you should. It’s not hard to get started and even if you aren’t an expert, it can be a lot of fun just to be outside for a while. If you’re a seasoned veteran I’m sure you have your own favorite resources. What are they? Did I miss your favorite? Tell me about it in the comments.

Christopher Jones throwing a disc at a disc golf tee in the woods