With the price of a gallon of gas consistently above $3.50 these days, it can be hard to get away.

Even a short weekend trip down to Portland or up into the Olympics can end up costing the better part of $50-100 in fuel alone. Not to mention the inevitable snacks, restaurant road food and possible cost of admission depending on where you’re heading. And then, once there’s no more driving to be done, the libations … oh, the libations.

Frustrating as the costs may be, they don’t put a halt to the hankering for a getaway when the sun returns with summer-like temperatures.

With that in mind, we (here at What’s Up) have decided to bring you a monthly feature on places you can “get away” without ever leaving the county, through the eyes of yours truly — Joker’s Peace.

On a recent sunny Sunday, being a lonely bachelor while my wife and son were off at the grandparents’, the inside of my living room had begun to look like the padded walls of an asylum. The sun shone freedom through the giant front room window, yet I sat on the couch with a blank stare, flipping through 500 channels of nothing that I wanted to watch.

“I oughta get out and enjoy the great outdoors,” I thought, shaking the doldrums.

Since I’m not much of a hiker, and not really one for many forms of strenuous exercise other than at the gym or when challenging colleagues to a game of basketball, my options were a automatically limited.

I pondered a trip to the waterfront for one of my son’s favorite pastimes — throwing rocks in the water — but it just didn’t seem as much fun without him.

So I enlisted the wisdom of my always entertaining sidekick, Mr. Moran, and we arrived at the conclusion of a more modern pastime — similar to throwing rocks in the water, only with retrievable frisbees in the woods — a game of disc golf.

Now this is a wonderful sport. A year-round recreational game akin to traditional golf, only less pretentious with more beers, more shrubbery, frisbees instead of golf balls and baskets instead of holes. And, what’s more, there’s now four courses scattered throughout Bremerton and Port Orchard.

The game is something I’d been introduced to upon moving to the Northwest.

But the first few times I’d played last year, I was more concerned with keeping track of the disc I had borrowed and not spilling my beverage on the romp through the woods, than I was with the actual sport.

This year, I wanted to bring my own disc, a drink carrier and a whooping on the scorecard.

Being the only place to purchase a disc on a Sunday (though you can get them at Big 5, Kitsap Sports and Team Sports during the week) Mr. Moran and I traveled from Bremerton to the south end of Port Orchard, winding through the woods and arriving at Dalaiwood in Ollala, one of Kitsap’s four courses, the only one with a pro shop.

Deviant from the rest of the courses in Kitsap, Dalaiwood is located on a couple acres of a local disc golf enthusiast’s backyard. But like the rest, its open to the public.

When we arrived, the street was lined with cars on both sides, and a pack of experienced disc golfers were arriving with their pro-looking gear. Mr. Moran and I strolled in empty-handed, purchased one disc each, had a chat with the course-keeper Papa Scott and were soon enough on our way on the 18-hole course.

The game was neck-and-neck through the first four or five holes but soon after that we lost track as the math increased in difficulty. It didn’t matter much though, an hour or so of chasing discs through the woods later and it was time for the post-game barbecue.

A Sunday well-spent.

And as for the pocketbook — $10 for a new disc, less than $10 for gas. Ka-ching. WU