Pros:
Dawson Park is a lovely multi-use park that sits in Suncadia Resorts just outside Cle Elum. The park is beautiful with many activiites to choose from including basketball, tennis, playgrounds, ballfields, and a dog park. There are paved biking/walking paths and a hut in the center which loans out equipment including discs and course maps. There are the cleanest, nicest restrooms on site I've encountered anywhere.
The course starts over near the restrooms and plays at a recreational level. There is a course sign at the beginning with a map and distances for each hole. And then each tee sign has the distances for each hole. That's a problem I'll address later.
The tee pads are natural. Some are decent while a couple ( # 2 & 4) are very uneven and dangerous.
# 1 is listed as a 313' Par 4. It's an easy eagle waiting to happen, just a simple hyser bomb into the woods near the basket. The rest are played as Par 3's.
# 5 is a cool 199' downhill ACE run which has you throwing through a 20' wide swath in the trees.
The signs for # 6 and 7 are both incorrect as the holes have been redesigned. # 6 was a 345' throw straight up a forested hill to a blind basket. It should have been about a Par 6 for the clientele who are mostly playing this course, which are young parents with elementary school aged kids.
# 7 is listed as 52' but the basket is more like 200' and sits down a hillside.
# 8 is a clever little downhill anhyser throw and then you finish with # 9 being a short 210' ACE run through the trees.
Cons:
This course plays as a recreational level course but probably 95% of it's clientele are beginners/novices who have borrowed discs from the hut. The course is way over their heads.
The problem with making these nice tee signs with the original distances is when you find out that you have to change a basket location, then you're stuck with all your signs being wrong! That's the case here. # 6 and 7 are now totally different holes. It was confusing for me and I've played almost 600 courses. These beginners were clueless.
# 4 tee pad is slanting downward on a throw most beginners are trying to crank on. It needs to be leveled. It's dangerous. # 6 tee pad is very rough and uneven.
Other Thoughts:
The park is beautiful and heavily used, at least on a lovely summer day on the Labor Day Weekend. The course has some wonderful things going for it, nice park, nice baskets, a couple fun throws but it just doesn't reach it target audience. It's a little too technical and a little too long for them. But they probably aren't writing reviews for DGCR, are they?