Last Sunday, T and I went out with my family (Mom, Dad, Bro, Bro's gf) to get our Christmas tree. In AZ, you can buy a beautiful tree from Oregon or Washington on pretty much any corner. You can also buy a $15 permit to go out into the Northern AZ forest to cut down your own (clearly, we opted for the latter or this post would be a little less interesting).
We started out at my parents' place in Payson (less than 2 hours from the Valley and about 5000 feet in elevation) and headed further North to the Mogollon Rim (pronounced "mug-ee-on"). Along with our tags, the Forest Service (USFS) provided maps to the cutting areas that we registered and descriptions of the species in the area.
Our first stop was about 2 miles into the cutting area where the forest was filled with Ponderosa Pine. We hiked off from the road with our handsaws, chainsaw, and lopper. After about 20 minutes of walking, we found a perfect Christmas tree ponderosa.
We carried the tree back to the car (very heavy since it's still filled with water) and kept on driving north.
We pulled over a second time to the side of the road where we saw more spruce and firs (we estimated that we were around 7,500 feet in elevation). The Fam hiked down a raveen where there was a lot more snow still on the ground and where we found our other two trees! Bro's is a Blue Spruce and ours is a Douglas Fir.
T and I bought a new car! Check out the pic of our 2008 Ford Explorer. We love it and are so happy to have more than one car again!
Last Sunday, T and I went out with my family (Mom, Dad, Bro, Bro's gf) to get our Christmas tree. In AZ, you can buy a beautiful tree from Oregon or Washington on pretty much any corner. You can also buy a $15 permit to go out into the Northern AZ forest to cut down your own (clearly, we opted for the latter or this post would be a little less interesting).
