Bill
We just got back Sunday. We played both courses at Auburn, the Judge twice (bumped from the Senator in the afternoon) and both courses at Birmingham. We also played some of the par 3 course in Birmingham--good fun!
I do enjoy walking, but 36 a day on those courses would have been absolutely brutal.
Ditto your assessment on the Judge--I was under the impression it was the crown jewel of the Trail, but we enjoyed other courses more. We very much liked the Lake and the Links at Auburn; interesting holes and interesting greens. A second/third round on each would have been nice after figuring out where you are going, but, well, these trips are always too short.
One negative was how soft the courses were. After all the storms, I am sure it was unavoidable, and it was not as bad as I had feared. But I suspect many of the holes, and especially the greens with the pronounced slopes, play so much more fun when the are fast and hard. It was not hard to see numerous places where hills and slopes and swales could have been used to funnel the ball around the green, but those options were not really available as soft as everything was.
Andy