Pros:
We'll start with the good - the pure quality of golf at this course is very good to excellent, and gave me vibes of Kaposia Park in St. Paul, MN. Really good use of elevation, fair, but challenging fairways and lines to hit, solid variety in length, direction, and general "type" of hole. Risk/Reward was very prominent - you play close to the Root River a few times, and if the river's running high, you'll have a flooded ravine early in the course to contend with. Several baskets had serious elevation challenges to contend with...you'll be dealing with championship rolls here often if you're not careful.
Outside of a couple of natural tees (this is very clearly a "work in progress" course), the tees for this course were a mixture of brick-lattice and hard plastic tees - they got the job done and were all plenty big. Baskets were a mix - there was a random Innova Discatcher in there, but most were of some triple-chain variety that I didn't recognize, but caught really well. Trash cans were present at at least a majority of holes.
Seemed like every hole had multiple pin positions, from what I remember. The rough was not as bad as it appears at first glance, but still could get pretty gnarly if you really shank a drive.
Cons:
Navigation - I'm not going to sugar coat this...the navigation was extremely frustrating. I'm not lying or exaggerating to say that progressing through this course is the most difficult time I've ever had at a disc golf course, and that I was incredibly lucky to catch up to a couple of players who let me follow them through the meat of the course...I nearly walked off in frustration, it got so bad. I remember exactly one tee sign on the course showing hole number or distance, and outside of a handful of random wooden signs saying "hole X" so as to suggest to walk a certain way to get there...good luck trying to figure out the hole to hole transitions on your own. Basically "look for worn down grass moving away from the basket, there ain't much else".
Making things more frustrating was that a map of the course was basically impossible to find online (nothing on DGCR, or at the course itself), and when I asked the guys I followed where on Earth I could find this, they suggested using UDisc...sorry dudes, I know you mean well, but I'm not buying a subscription to UDisc to figure out where TF to go today.
Other Thoughts:
Fair amount of blind holes, but many, if not all, had high flagpoles raised from the top of them to aid you with locating the basket if you couldn't see it from the tee. If you're playing by yourself, or are a first timer there, it would certainly not hurt to give the fairways a walkdown to check out where you're throwing regardless, though.
There was a prominent walking path criss-crossing this course with white spray-paint lines laid down denoting the path. I feel like something similar could have been used to denote the path from hole to hole, but a hint to keep in mind is that outside of a 75'-100' concurrent stroll down the walking path at one point, the hole to hole transitions , while crossing the walking path often, pretty much stayed distinct from the walking path. The continuation to the next hole was usually close to where you intersected with the walking path, so if you find yourself going down the walking path for any significant period of time, you probably are going the wrong way.
Overall, this course has real potential. It's obviously still a work in progress - one of the natural tees (maybe it was hole 8? It got tough to remember what hole was what, given the lack of tee signs) had a stack of bricks by it suggesting that another brick lattice tee was next to be laid down, but the navigation was such a problem that I couldn't rate it any higher than I did.
After speaking to members of the local disc golf community about the logistics of this particular course's maintenance, and coming to realize just how MUCH work has been put in (mostly) by a local player Brandon Theriault, how much of a labor of love this has been for him, and how little help he gets from the city, I am going to bump this review up a bit. The core issue still stands - the navigation at Johnson still needs a lot of work, but I am going to cut Brandon some slack - he works his ASS off to make this course a thing for the community.
This course is easily a 4 with better course navigation though, if not a 4.5. I hope to come back and play some time soon, and if the navigation improves significantly, this course is worth a trip out of your way to play.