Golf Guide: Rockford - IL

Known as the Forest City, Rockford, Illinois certainly has more than its share of trees, and travelers who are fond of a walk in the woods certainly can traipse through the bucolic expanses of Winnebego County's various forest preserve districts.

Visitors with a fondness for horticulture should visit Anderson Gardens and the Klehm Arboretum and Botanical Garden, a 155-acre living museum. Yet Rockford is also home to plenty of attractions of the non-flora variety. The Ethnic Heritage Museum, the Mactown Living History Education Center, the Midway Village and Museum Center and the Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum should all fill non-golfing hours.

Visitors to the region, however, need not restrict their golfing impulses, since the Rockford Park District operates five municipal courses. Yet on the chance that hoity-toity golfers will thumb their noses at the prospect of traveling to play a muni, these esthetes should be alerted to the fact that Aldeen Golf Club, the District's flagship course, has been ranked by Golf Digest as the best muni in Illinois, and Golf Magazine has ranked it as high as 23 on its Thrifty Fifty list, meaning that Aldeen Golf Club is also affordable, in addition to being great.

Only an hour from both Madison and Chicago's northwest suburbs, this Dick Nugent design features water hazards on 12 holes and 62 bunkers. Its signature eighth hole is the hole golfers will likely talk about on the trip home, since it features an island green and a replica of the Old Course's Swilcan Bridge.