Rancho Manana, Cave Creek
The third day of our Arizona golf trip we played Rancho Manana, in Cave Creek, Arizona, and that’s the day my game came together. I just felt so good standing over the ball!
It was a breathtakingly beautiful course. Here’s what it looks like when you pull into the parking lot near the clubhouse. Paradise!
One of the reasons the course is so beautiful is that it has a lot of elevation changes.
Here’s a view from the fairway of the number one handicap hole, number four. It’s a par four dogleg right. I’m standing from about where my drive landed. I parred the hole 
This was the first time I noticed the way golf balls can embed in Saguaro cactuses. Don’t just bounce off like if you hit a tree here in the northeast.
You have to place your drive carefully to score on the par threes. Here’s a view from the tee box of number 5. I took this shot more to capture the landscape, but if you look closely, the fairway is that teeny tiny strip of green along the left side. I parred this one too
I didn’t do so well on number seven, another par three. Bogey. The yellowish trees in the middle of the frame are poplars — there’s a wash running through down there, behind the green. The tee boxes in the foreground are surrounded by rosemary, which was blooming and buzzing with honey bees.
It started to get chilly later on in the round as a cold front came in. Here’s a view from the white tees on number 13.
The wind started to blow. And the lighting got dramatic! Too bad my camera choked a little bit on the contrast.
As I got cold, my game started to fall apart a little bit — I didn’t score as well on the back nine as I did the front. Got my first triple bogey (on the highest handicap hole on the back, but still). All the same, I finished with a 92, which is a good 10 strokes lower than I should have given my handicap. Not bad, considering my goal most of the year was to break 100 — and here I was, three strokes from breaking 90.
That’s the 18th green. Squeezed in right before dark. Boy was it nice to sit down at the course resturant, the Tonto Bar and Grill. The food was excellent, and we sat on their patio, which was enclosed and warmed by heaters in the ceiling. A perfect ending to a wonderful day of golf.