On our recent trip to Marquette, MI, I had the great joy of introducing my nephew to the sport of disc golf. He had never played before and I was really eager to get him out on one of the great courses in the Marquette area to see if he liked it.
It was one of the first things we did on Monday morning after arriving to the campground on Sunday. Silver Creek is actually just a little bit outside of Marquette in the small town of Harvey, MI.
As I read online, this course originally started as a small nine hole course that wasn't configured very well. The course today is a full 18 hole course, but I honestly can't say I feel it is configured much better. Of course I never played the 9 hole design, but it was quite confusing.
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There weren't any clear indications of where to park to get to the beginning of the course, so we ended up parking much further away than we should have. We walked down this path which actually turned out to be a road we could have driven down to get to the start of the course. It takes you along the edge of many of the holes that comprise the back half of the 18 hole course.
Eventually, we made our way to the beginning of the course. Knowing the boys I was a bit concerned that the initial walk would turn them off to playing the game, but they turned out to not mind it so much. As 
As I said, the course although redesigned was still laid out a little weird. For example, they had "blue tees" and "red tees". As you can see in the photos above, the Blue Tees are a bit further back than the Red Tees. I decided to use the red tees given the fact that my nephew had never played before and I had about 20+ years of experience playing disc golf on the rest of the group.
Unfortunately, the red tees weren't very well kept up and they were covered with some kind of indoor/outdoor carpet that had been worn down to the point of being slippery. I ended up using the blue tees from then on just because I was worried about slipping and hurting myself or throwing out my back. The rest of the group followed suit.
The other thing that was a bit confusing to me about this course was the fact that there were alternate baskets that you could throw your disc into. If you look really closely in the photo above, you can see the first basket in front center and then the alternate basket off to the left further back.
The scorecard on UDisc didn't make it very easy to figure out which one we were supposed to be shooting for from the blue tees, so I just picked one and went for it. That likely skewed my scorecard quite a bit, but without someone local there to explain it to me, we were on our own.
There was a decent amount of signage helping you move from one hole to the next which was nice because this course took you deep into the woods. I'd actually list it as heavily wooded. I hit so many trees in this round of 18. It was horrible.
Most courses around where I live are pretty flat because the area is relatively flat. Up in Marquette, that isn't the case and there were some really nice elevation changes that made the course extra challenging. This hole for example had the basket sitting right on the edge of a sand embankment. If you threw your disc too far you had to putt back and hope you didn't go over the edge of the sand hill.
As I said, the course was heavily wooded and we were lucky enough that we didn't run into any other players while we were out. It made for a nice peaceful round. That's part of the reason I like Disc Golf so much, it gets you out into the world and let's you interact with nature a bit while still playing a game.
That's a shot of
While this wasn't one of the hardest courses I have ever played, I would definitely rate it as quite technical. As I mentioned before, the trees don't make it easy at all. You often have to thread the needle on your throws to get them to avoid slamming into the trunk of a tree. Something I didn't excel at in this round.
I did have some good shots though. The one above landed just about 10 yards shy of the basket from my tee off. It was probably one of the longest throws I have ever had. If you look really close in the last photo above, you can see the path up to the tee pad in the center of the screen. That's where I threw it from and I am standing taking this photo where it landed.
This was one of the more interesting holes on the course. It ran right along the edge of a school/church and you had to throw across this open space to get to the basket. If you look to the middle center of the screen, you can see the tee pad sign. I was standing and taking this photo fairly close to where the basket sits.
Here is another view from the tee pad area:
This was actually the location of the red tee pad. You can see the blue tee pad off to the left. That's my truck on the right side of the screen.
Many times baskets will have what are called "guardian trees" to make it more difficult for you to approach them. For example, if you were to over throw the basket above, it would be difficult to throw back at it the other way due to the tree. You would likely have to wasted several throws to come back to the side of the basket and then sink your putt.
I'd definitely play Silver Creek again, but there are a couple of other courses in Marquette that I would like to try out first. There is another 18 hole course across town that we were going to try to hit, but we ran out of time on our trip. Then there is another 9 hole course in the middle of town that would have been cool to checkout.
If we did come back to Silver Creek, I would try to get some clarification on which tee pads and which baskets to use so I could ensure my scoring was correct.
It took us about 2 hours and 10 minutes to play the course and I was the definite winner at +17. I know that probably seems like a lot, but it's pretty average for me. Plus, I was using the red tee score card, so there is a good chance par for some of the holes would have been higher if I had used the blue score card since we were shooting from the blue tees.
My nephew shot a 41 over par which again, seems horrible, but it isn't too bad given the fact that he has never played before. I should also mention his +41 wasn't the worst score on the day! His friend had a +42.
In any event, it was a great day out exploring some new areas of Marquette that we had never seen before. I can't wait to get up back up there one day and try the other courses.
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 