Moab Golf Course

Few golf settings on earth compare to Moab's. The Colorado Plateau surrounds this 18-hole public course with a landscape so dramatically sculpted — red sandstone fins, towering canyon walls, and the vast open sky of canyon country — that the scenery alone is worth the round. This is a desert course in the truest sense, where the high desert sun bakes the fairways firm, the air is thin and dry, and the ball tends to fly a little farther than your home track would suggest.

Moab GC sits at the edge of a town better known as an adventure sports mecca — the jumping-off point for Arches and Canyonlands national parks — which means the golf here carries a similar spirit of rugged, wide-open terrain. The surrounding red rock bluffs frame nearly every hole, giving even routine approach shots a backdrop most resort designers would pay handsomely to manufacture.

For visiting golfers, this is genuinely destination golf, not because the course is a ranked marquee layout, but because nowhere else will you play against scenery quite this surreal.