Golf Trips — Pacific Northwest

A trip to Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is built around a simple premise: the golf comes first, and everything else exists to support it, from the intentionally remote drive to the walkable, golfer-focused lodging. Across the property, the resort delivers endlessly varied, wind-shaped golf that turn competition into camaraderie. It can be difficult to book and deliberately inconvenient to reach, but those barriers only sharpen the reward.

High desert golf in central Oregon, with Pronghorn's two courses (Fazio and Nicklaus), Tetherow in town, and Crosswater at Sunriver rounding out a four-course rotation within 30 miles. The Bend restaurant and brewery scene is strong enough that evenings don't require much planning. A three-to-four course trip packages cleanly, especially for West Coast groups who can drive it.

Links-style golf on a bluff above the Columbia River in eastern Washington, where the original Gamble Sands course and the newer QuickSands layout give the trip two genuinely different 18-hole options on the same property, and the Scarecrow short course handles the in-between sessions. Groups who make the drive tend to stay longer than planned -- the replayability is the point.

A high-desert cattle ranch in eastern Oregon with three course options -- Chief Egan, the reversible Craddock/Hankins loop, and the Gauntlet par-3 -- all included in an all-inclusive rate that covers lodging, food, and unlimited golf. Remote by any measure, but the logistics are simpler than they look on a map.

A walking-only links course on a former gravel mine above Puget Sound, outside Tacoma -- the venue for the 2015 US Open that drew mixed reviews during the tournament but improved significantly after a green reconstruction. The course is public, the setting is genuine, and the walking requirement keeps the pace honest. Chambers Bay works as the anchor for a Washington state golf trip that extends to Gold Mountain, Salish Cliffs, or Washington National.