MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Here’s a question: Can anyone working in America today besides a weatherman be so consistently wrong and still keep his job? Think about it. How often has your local “meteorologist” been wrong, and I mean dead wrong , on his “forecasts"? And how often have you feared that a bad call at work might lead to some, I don’t know, trouble with the higher ups? Trust me, whatever you do out there, if you were wrong as often as weathermen, you’d be out of a job. Yet night after night they keep coming back. OK, they’ve got a ...

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. - In a little more than a year from now, America’s eyes, if not the world’s, will be focused on this little hamlet in the mountains of New Hampshire’s North Woods - if only for about 30 minutes. Every presidential election, Dixville Notch, population 18-20 (depending on who you ask), casts the nation’s first votes, at 12:00 a.m. on the first Tuesday of November. New Hampshire law says that once every registered voter has had his say in a particular town, voting stations there can close and votes can be tallied. In Dixville Notch, the whole process takes around ...

NEWRY, Maine - I’m sitting on the slopes of Sunday River Ski Mountain, at the Sunday River Brewing Co., drinking the Sunday River Summer. Yeah, it’s Fall, I know, but this brew is seriously quaffable. Which got me thinking about some of the secondary benefits of golfing in Maine. Pretty much everywhere you’ll end up will have a microbrewery nearby. This state is replete with really solid local brews - in Carabassett Valley, in Farmington, in nearby Bethel. Check out the Granary Brewpub in Farmington, the Sugarloaf Brewing Co. in Carabassett Valley, or stuff from the Casco Bay Brewing Co. ...

CARABASSETT VALLEY, Maine – If you play Sugarloaf Golf Club here, then you’ll quickly learn all about Robert Trent Jones Jr.’s ‘String of Pearls’. Jones designed the course about 20 years ago. The string consists of Nos. 10-15 that wind along the southern branch of the Carabassett River (some say ‘pearls’ come from all the boulders that are strewn along the riverbed and take up position along side, or in the middle of, the holes. It’s as impressive a series of holes as you’ll find anywhere. No. 10 is an easy par 4 with breathtaking views (and a tee shot to a ...

BELGRADE LAKES, Maine - New Englanders consider Fall their birthright, the best time of year. On about this time of year, especially up here, summer is a distant memory (it probably only lasted two months or so anyway). The days grow increasingly short, and there is a bite to the air, a suggestion of something not that far off, maybe only a week or two away: the first frost. From there, well, it’s a ski ramp down into winter. But that’s in a little bit. Now there’s only the crispness leading the way. Oh, did I mention the leaves? Yellows, crimsons, scarlets ...