Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Christmas Tree Harvest 2011

Every year we get a tree to decorate for the holidays. It’s a fun tradition. It’s also a good excuse to put our ornament collection on display. We have tons ornaments from our childhood and ones we have collected ourselves. We have snowflakes, cowgirls, Homer Simpson drinking Duff, skis, Santa playing soccer, nutcrackers, and many, many more.

Sometimes we buy a tree and sometimes we cut our own. We are slowly making it our annual tradition to cut our own the week after Thanksgiving. The sooner we get it done, the more time we have to ski, and enjoy our tree of course.

After an extensive email chain with a dozen friends and spouses, we had a plan. Meet at noon at the Safeway lot and head up to Lolo Pass. We picked up tree tags for $5 at the Ranger Station and parked in the upper lot on the Montana side.

We quickly built a small (and by small I really mean large) fire and cracked a few beers. The dogs played in the snow and dug holes looking for sticks to fetch. My little boy loved to jump into the holes the dogs left.



After a few hours of swapping ski stories and making plans for future ski trips, it was time to get down to business. We had to bring a tree home. We like the Charlie Brown style tree, not the Clark Griswold style tree. Lolo Pass is full of Charlie Brown trees and we found one quickly. It didn’t long to haul it out and tie it to the roof. The sun was setting and it was time to head home.


But no trip to Lolo Pass is complete without a stop at the LumberJack. The lot was full and almost every vehicle had a tree strapped to the roof. We ordered some food and settled in to watch some football by the fire.

Not a bad way to start the holiday season.

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