Sunset Links Golf Course and RV Park; Salome, AZ

Tiny, blink-blink-and-you-miss-it Salome, AZ is not the type of place you expect to find a golf course, nor even an RV Park for that matter. It is set in one of those vast, arid, scrub-desert plains that you usually blast through on your way to somewhere else. And yet when I was walking from the town's lone motel where Mexican migrant workers were drinking cervezas on the porch after a long day's work, to the food truck where I had one of the best burritos of my life, I saw a sign that read "Desert Palms Golf and RV Resort."

The next morning I left my big pack in my room and set out walking with my golf bag. I was picked up and driven to the course by a local rancher who told me that the Sunset Links Golf Course (attached to Desert Palms RV Park) was built by a Canadian developer who was selling lots to other Canadians - snowbirds coming down to escape the arctic winter. He was as baffled by this as I was. He shook his head and, with a deep, Marlboro-aged chuckle said, “This ain’t no Scottsdale.”

But there it was - a legitimate eighteen hole course with neatly trimmed bunkers and decently structured greens. It even had a shiny new fleet of golf carts parked next to a practice green and an air conditioned double wide trailer for a pro shop. And judging by the rows of prefab houses, some with stickers still on the windows, the lots were selling.

Honestly, I was disappointed by it all... by the fact that it was such a decent, yet completely unremarkable course. I was hoping for something with a lot more character, even if that character was on the grubbier end of the spectrum - something more "RV Park-like" - maybe oil and sand greens, jack rabbit skulls for tee markers, an octogenarian version of Carl from Caddie Shack on a tractor?

But I bought a couple of Coors Lights and played nine anyway... and I can at least say it is true to it's namesake... the view of the sunset over the distant Harquahala Mountains is beautiful.