Frontier Falls: The Undiscovered Country (Or Mini-Golf Course)

Achievement: #45. Try 5 Things in the Entertainment Book | #61. Go Mini-Golfing Somewhere We Haven’t Before

Well, I know my husband always complains that I make plans without looking into logistics on things, and, you know, on occasion, he’s right, but… Sometimes I make plans and then actually look into logistics and just choose to pretend everything is okay. Enter our mini golf Achievement.

Mini Golf
The evening started innocently enough: I was trying to be budget-friendly and use one of our Entertainment Book coupons, so we could get in for half price. AND, I even looked up the website for Frontier Falls, so I knew exactly where it was, AND I called them to find out if they were open or not, instead of relying on website information, and they assured me they were.

Mini Golf
What I guess I didn’t process was the distance between Squirrel Hill and Rochester. I sometimes forget that I no longer live in Ohio Township, and therefore, my memory of, “Oh, it’s just slightly past Ambridge!” while accurate, does not give the full picture of the length of the drive it now takes from our house. So, yeah, an hour later, here we were. In Rochester. Which now has a seemingly-useless roundabout.

Mini Golf
Rochester also has Frontier Falls, an old-west-themed mini golf park. It sneaks up on you as you’re driving on Route 65, nestled in among a huge cliff of rocks across from the railroad tracks. We were honestly shocked to find it in such an industrial-looking spot.

Mini Golf
Michael decided to start us off. Here’s the opening putt. Each hole is conveniently marked with the par, just so a clear level of competition can be set by each golfer.

Mini Golf
Frontier Falls also has a lovely lake in the center.

Mini Golf
Here I am on the green of the second hole.

Mini Golf
Around the third hole, we started to realize that either 1) we’re both really out of practice, or 2) Frontier Falls is really tough. Here is Michael, chasing his ball as it rolled backwards down the opening length of green for roughly the fourth time in a row.

Mini Golf
And here was my sad little purple ball, in the rough.

Mini Golf
I insisted on enforcing the ‘play it where it lies’ rule with Michael, so here he is, chipping it out of the rough.

I just want to take a moment to assure you all that we are not always this terrible at mini golf.

Mini Golf
In fact, back in 2009, the first year of our Achievements list, there was actually a time that we both got holes-in-one on the same hole!

Mini Golf
Clearly, it was just the difficulty of this particular golf course, which was home to terrifying caverns like this. I presume that this was here to threaten you into a finer golf performance, lest the old-timey ghosts who died along the railroad tracks come out of their hiding spot and boo in your general direction.

Mini Golf
I, however, was not afraid. I’m a champion old-timey ghost fighter.

Mini Golf
This train rumbled past, and we used its loud entrance to excuse our continued crappy golf performance. We were so many strokes over par by the second half of the course that we would have been better off using our score for a game of bowling.

Mini Golf
And here is the lovely, promised waterfall from the website. I was impressed! I’m also curious if it’s a natural waterfall, or if they somehow created it. It seems like it belongs there on the rocky cliff.

Mini Golf
This doesn’t count for our waterfall Achievement, but we took our picture in front of it anyway.

Our end score? I don’t even want to talk about it. Let’s just leave it at this: I won. We were both so high over par that there should have been a way for us to both lose by default. Final verdict: Frontier Falls is a tough course!

But it’s definitely worth the drive out to Rochetser if you’re a mini golf fan. The course is lovely, even with the occasional creepy tunnel. And it’s cheap as can be: with our Entertainment Book coupon, it was $5.50 for two games! They also appear to have some ice cream and snow cones at the entrance. We truly enjoyed our trip outside of our mini-golf-comfort zone!

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