I was up in North Conway two weeks ago and played White Mountain CC -- the one right next to the train station downtown and it was an ordeal due to leaves covering the course.
No matter how hard you focused on watching the shot, the leaves tended to be small and curled into roughly golf ball size. We might as well have been playing in the middle of a driving range. We had to hunt for about half of the shots we hit, which was a major headache. That's a fun course, but not during leaf season. The next day we decided to try Hale's Location and not once did we have a similar issue-- so good was the maintenance.
There are a few good courses that I've played in NH and a few more that were not great, but in that part of the state, Hale's is the best course you can find, despite it being only 9 holes. One time I was playing there at the foot of Humphrey's Ledge and I literally heard voices. I looked around and there is nobody there. Eventually I realized that the voices came from rock climbers who were about 400 feet up on the ledge and the acoustics of the rock made it sound like they were 20 feet away. Weird. I played the loop twice one day and finished with an 81 -- my best score ever.
Late in the round I thought I had a good shot at breaking 80 when I was hitting a short chip but as I was in my downswing a guy whose house backed up to the green started up his helicopter and that scared the hell out of me (I never saw it due to trees/brush) and my shot went wild and I double bogeyed the hole.
I thought about saying that wasn't fair and doing the shot over, but there is nothing in the rules to cover helicopters. I just knew that if I did that and broke 80 it would feel hollow, So 81 is what I shot.
Not my pic, but it gives an
View attachment 13807 idea for how cool the place is: