Went and cut our Christmas Tree yesterday!

ragedracer1977

We buy a permit to cut a tree in the National Forest every year. Today was the day! Packed up this morning and headed up north. Surprised to find there was quite a bit of snow! Didn't expect there to be any. The roads were MUDDY! Glad I had my M1009 with boggers. I had it in 4L a lot. We ended up on some old logging roads and some of the mud was deep! I'll be spending a bunch of money at the quarter wash tomorrow!

Pics:

On the way. I love the scenery in AZ!



It's loud in my truck!



National forest!



Top of the Mogollon Rim (off FR300 and 260 for those of you who know the area) Prescribed burn in the background.





The kids always love to have a pic of dad pretending to fall off a cliff....



SNOW! (yeah, it's sparse, but hey it's only an hour drive from the first pic!)





My youngest on his first Christmas tree hunt!



Backstory to this pic. Like I said, you have to buy a permit. They're only 15 bucks, but you can only buy one. You can't go get another. The "rule" is, you have to tag the tree before you start cutting, so you have to carry it with you. My wife was carrying it. We stopped several times looking for a tree. At some point, she realized she lost the permit. I'll be totally honest with you. I nearly lost my temper. I can be a hot head sometimes and man it was close. I took a breath and remembered that cutting our own tree isn't really about the tree. It's about making memories with the kids, spending time together in the outdoors, and having a good time. I quickly realized I didn't want the kids to remember this trip as the time mom lost the permit and dad yelled at her and mom cried. So, we spent a lot of time backtracking everywhere we walked. And we walked ALOT. Snow on the ground and a white envelope... Amazingly, we found it. I was so happy!

My wife with the recovered permit!



Onward!



Found the perfect tree! (which means its way too tall for our house, as always. They look so small in the forest! I had to cut 3' off of it when we got home!)



Loaded on the truck.





Happiness!



Sunset on the rim.





Merry Christmas!

ragedracer1977

Well, I made them smaller, but man, they're really small. =(

If you want to see them full size, right click on the image, click open in new tab, when it opens, look at the URL at the top. See the "th_" before the image name? Delete that and hit enter. It will re-open full size.

JodiS75

Looks like fun! Thanks for sharing all the pics!