Torrey Pines north course is the easier course of Torrey Pines. The north and south courses are used in the annual PGA tournament The Buick Invitational. With both courses on the Pacific Ocean, no matter what course you play you will have spectacular views. The US open will be played on Torrey Pines south in 2008. Although Torrey Pines is owned by the city, for non-resident golfers the fees can be a little pricey.

The course starts out with a par 5 heading towards the ocean. The next few holes then go along the canyon until you get to the 6th, 7th, and 8th holes. The 6th hole is a par 4 that goes straight towards the ocean. The 7th hole, a par 3, is the signature hole for the course; downhill with the whole Pacific Ocean in the background. The 8th is a great hole that goes right along the ocean but is uphill and a good 420-yard par 4. After that the course goes around the canyons and cliffs and the views are still spectacular with the back nine running along the Torrey Pines State Park.



The Easiest hole on the course would have to be the second hole. It’s a 320-yard par 4 that will always play with the wind behind you. There’s one bunker on the right side of the fairway and one bunker on the right front part of the green. Also on the right side of the fairway is a big pine and if you get behind that you have just made the hole 10 times harder. Your next shot will have to be low but then high enough to get over the green side bunker (next to impossible). The green is nice and flat and will not break that much.

The hardest hole on the course would have to be the 13th. A par 4, 430-yard dogleg left. If you hit your tee shot to the right you will be ok but you will have at least 50 yards more then what you should have had. On the left you have a fairway bunker right where the hole begins to dogleg. You need to hit about 290 to be able to carry the bunker. Your second shot is where it gets tough. You have a huge bunker at the front and on the right of the green. Then you have a bunker along the whole left side of the green. On top of that you have a small green to hit at with tons of slope all over the green. A par is a great score for this hole.

Torrey Pines is a great course to play but very hard if you play the course a week after the Buick Invitational. They let the rough grow out for the tournament and will leave it like that for a good 2 weeks. If you play the course soon after the Invitational make sure you watch your ball if it is heading in the rough, because you will loose golf balls in the rough if you’re not paying attention. All greens slope towards the ocean, so no matter what it looks like make sure you play the ocean break. Enjoy it and remember that this course is not easy. If you don’t play well, don’t get upset - this is a course where the pros play.

(Originally posted on The Museum of Hoaxes)

For Christmas I received a great book, Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman. Immediately I flipped through it to find anything about San Diego, and soon came across the legend of Midgetville.

Midgetville refers to the legend of a town consisting of scaled-down houses built for little people. Midgetville is said to exist in various places throughout America. As Moran and Sceurman note, the most credible rumor locates such a town in Jefferson Township, New Jersey, on the former estate of circus mogul Alfred T. Ringling. There really is a collection of small-sized houses there that could conceivably have once been home to a colony of midgets. However, another very persistent legend locates a Midgetville in San Diego.

Moran and Sceurman don't go into much detail about the San Diego Midgetville, but I realized that I had heard this legend before (my wife had also heard it). This is how it goes: back in the 1930s a group of little people who had made a lot of money in Hollywood appearing in movies such as The Wizard of Oz supposedly came down to San Diego and built a collection of miniature houses on Mt. Soledad where they could live in comfort together. But of course, nobody seems to know exactly where on Mt. Soledad this group of small houses was or is, though everybody has heard of a "friend of a friend" who once accidentally found the houses (though this FOAF can never remember how to get back there).

Determined to find the houses, I did a google search and came across an article from 2003 written by Kenneth Smith for the Daily Aztec detailing his own efforts to track down San Diego's fabled 'Munchkin Houses'. After many false starts, he finally discovered that they were most probably "a group of four cottages on Hillside Drive in La Jolla... built by famed architect Cliff May." Although no midgets or little people were ever known to live in these houses, Smith says that, "The houses do indeed have smallish features, accentuated by an optical illusion. The steep road that passes them makes them seem even smaller than they actually are." Unfortunately only one of the four cottages remains standing, but Smith provides directions to find it: "take Hillside Drive from Torrey Pines Road. The house will be on your left-hand side. Look for the crazy midget handwriting." He also mentions that if you peek through the window (the house is unoccupied) you'll see "cobblestone-like tiled floors and a little round fireplace."

Of course, I had to see this for myself, even if no colony of Wizard-of-Oz midgets had ever lived there. So on New Year's Day I convinced my wife to accompany me on a search for the Munchkin House. The results were mixed. It was no problem finding Hillside Drive, but as it turns out Hillside Drive is fairly long. We were driving up and down it (as a line of cars formed behind us) wondering 'exactly which house on the left did he mean.' None of the houses leaps out at you and screams 'Munchkin House.' But finally we settled on one house that we figured must be it: Seventy-Four Seventy-Seven Hillside Drive. It had small windows and a small door. Plus, the address written beside the door looked a bit like 'crazy midget handwriting' (though I think Smith was joking about this). Ignoring the 'No Trespassing' sign (even though part of the legend of Midgetville is that the midgets who live there fiercely defend their land from the Bigs), I peeked through the window and saw the cobblestone-like tiled floors and a little round fireplace. So I think I found the Munchkin House, though I'm not 100% sure. It's certainly not anything that would catch your attention if you weren't specifically looking for it since it's really not that small, which made the trip a bit disappointing. But the weird thing is, I've already forgotten how to get back there.