I didn't know most of the people I went to Bandon with. That turned out to be one of the best parts.

There's something about a place that strips everything back that makes strangers easy. No carts means everyone is on foot, moving at the same pace, and conversation finds its rhythm naturally somewhere around the third hole. By the end of day one you know these people. By the end of the trip you're already planning the next one.

Six courses perched above the Pacific, all walking only, all with the kind of views that make you stop mid-round and recalibrate what golf is supposed to feel like. Pacific Dunes is the one people come back talking about. Tom Doak routing holes through the dunes in ways that feel discovered rather than designed. The northwest wind turns a manageable iron into a negotiation. The par-3 11th hugs the shoreline. The 13th plays into the wind and much longer than the yardage suggests.

Sheep Ranch is something else entirely. Coore and Crenshaw weaving holes in and out of coastal peninsulas, no sand bunkers, just grassy depressions that look like the land has always been that way. It probably has.

The protein balls at the turn. Simple, unpretentious, exactly what you need after nine holes into a headwind. A small detail that tells you the property pays attention to everything.

Evenings at the Bunker Bar. Good whiskey, a cigar, new friends becoming old ones faster than should be possible. Then morning comes and none of that matters. The fescue is moving, the wind is doing what it does off the Oregon coast, and someone in the group makes a birdie and everyone feels it.

Wore the GM Golf Pant across every round. Long days, salt air, changing conditions. Did its job and got out of the way. That is all you need.

Six courses, no carts, legs tired by Thursday, and I cannot wait to go back. It's in the walking.

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