When the mercury on old-school thermometers climbs to the tippy top, as it is wont to do during Arizona’s scorching summers, swinging clubs on shade-free Scottsdale fairways starts to feel as grueling and absurd as chopping wood in a Finnish sauna. Similarly, at this time of year, the allure of escaping the hellacious Floridian humidity or the Texas two-step of heat advisories and thunderstorms reaches a fever pitch.
A Northern Michigan golf bastion that racks up thousands of rounds played by out-of-staters every summer is just what the doctor ordered. An hour’s drive from Traverse City’s Cherry Capital Airport lies the town of Gaylord (pronounced Gay-lerd), an alpine village that takes chalet-architecture cues from its sister city in Pontresina, Switzerland. Sure, it may be a little hokey—but I soon came to appreciate the charms of the design overlay after a couple pints of Golden Grizzly lager at Big Buck Brewery, the local watering hole of choice where they serve flights in antler-ornamented beer carriers and you can also snag a bowl of elk bolognese or pickle-topped pizza. While we’re on a culinary kick, one cannot go to Gaylord, Mich., without developing a jones for the chocolate-covered ridged potato chips made at Alpine Chocolate Hause.
The town is the epicenter of 16 golf courses that comprise the Gaylord Golf Mecca—and that doesn’t even include the handful of area golf resorts that choose to go it alone and eschew the marketing coop. It’s a sandy-soiled rural golf oasis where the head count of green complexes far outnumbers traffic lights.
“Elk peeping” is a year-round pastime in Gaylord. You can gawk at gangs of the antler-endowed mammals at the Pigeon River County State Forest but there’s no need to leave downtown to scope out the second-largest members of the deer family. The city keeps 40 head of elk in a 108-acre fenced-in plot, aptly located right next to the local Elks Lodge on Grandview Blvd.
Now on to golf.
