In the Field: Elliott Sadler (cont'd)

The vacation is more for them. We enjoy going and having fun, but the vacation definitely centers on my nieces.

They've got a lot of good golf courses there, so when we go we try to play.

My dad used to have a fishing boat and we'd go out to the Gulf Stream and go fishing a lot -- and I miss that. But it's so expensive to go out only a few times, and we work so much we can't go out much any more.

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I'm particularly thankful to do the Nags Head trip with the family, because even though Daytona is on July 4 weekend, this trip it's pretty much going to be racing and out of there.

If I play golf in Nags Head, that will have to take care of my golfing fix this week. Usually at Daytona we're pretty busy and this year's no exception, especially since we've made a personnel switch, with Scott McDougall stepping up to crew chief of my Dodge Dealers/UAW Charger and Josh Browne stepping back to engineering. (read more)

I'm in on Thursday, then we practice that afternoon and qualify Thursday night. I've got a real busy Friday and then I don't want to do anything to drain myself and prevent me and my Evernham Motorsports team from having a great race Saturday night -- so usually I keep my sticks at home when I go to Daytona and I worry about them when I get back.

At Nags Head, there's a place called Duck Woods Country Club that's very nice -- and my favorite place to play is called the Pointe Golf Club, which is a beautiful place right before you go across the sound to Kitty Hawk.

The reason I like it is because it's wide open -- it gives me a lot of room to work. If you hit into one fairway, you can hit right back across to the other one.

There's another course called Nags Head Golf Links, but that's just way too hard for me. I like to go somewhere where I can shoot a good score and have fun.

See, this is a vacation place -- Nags Head. Why would you build such a hard golf course there? If people are on vacation to go play golf, they want to shoot good.

If I owned a golf course at a vacation place, it would be the easiest course in the world, because if you're on vacation you'd rather shoot 75 than 95, do you think?

It's not much fun shooting that bad, so we'd rather go someplace where you can shoot and have fun.

Elliott Sadler, now in his ninth full season in the Cup Series, shares weekly with NASCAR.COM readers life on the road through staff writer Dave Rodman.