I'm a Lumberjack and I'm Okay!

This four day weekend was much needed! Thanks to a thief employee at work and the aftermath of the arrest, I was a little drained come Wednesday. It may have been a full week. Did I mention I love my job?

This weekend was perfect! Jam packed full of fun. Thanksgiving was tremendous. It's hard to screw up a day with all that pumpkin pie floating around. Then Friday, after crapping out of 3:00am shopping lines (Excuses: the pie was weighing me down, or I'm sorry, 3:00am was not meant as an hour of the day humans experience vertically), I drove down to SLC to retrieve our Christmas tree cutting permit. That in and of itself was a treat. Very funny people at the BLM field office in SLC. Mrs. Grizzly Adams works there, did you know?

Fast forward to Saturday morning.

Ready with the chain saw and hungry tummies we headed north. In Snowville, Utah, we stopped for breakfast. Hungry tummies happy now. Miss Mollie of Mollie's Diner signed a copy of a cute cowboy calendar for the kids. She had to have been about 99 and was just the most darling old lady.

A few million miles and one "authorized vehicles only median" turn-around later,

we ended up in the Raft River Valley of the Sawtooth National Forest. At one point, we crossed over into Idaho, but the "graveled country road", as the map called it, took us back down into Utah.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting from our tree chopping experience, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking deserty mountainside. It didn't feel very Christmasy tromping through sagebrush and dodging cactus plants and bunny poo, especially without any snow, but by the time we hiked a little bit up the hill, I was sold that this is the only way to pick out a Christmas tree! Over there. No, this one. Wait, up here. Tromp tromp tromp.

How about him?
Nope, a little too Charlie Brown.

This one?

Ummmmm, just a tad too large.

Aaaaah, here we go.

Perfection! And of course, the Terrible Towel must make an appearance.

Stretch the psycho-lumberjack! He downed two perfect trees, one for us and one for Grandpa Paul. Time of Death: 10:53 am.


With our trees already chopped and loaded into the truck, it was time for some photos of my peeps. Yes, the Bear is very enthused about this prospect. It's not like I had taken any pictures of her in the last 12 hours, I don't know what the problem was. Squid was gracious as always.



It wouldn't be a successful wilderness outing if we didn't scout out any deer antlers.

Well, since we got our two perfect trees, we'll consider this 1/2 a piece of an old antler shed a success.

I do believe that even if we hadn't found our pinyons, Squid would have been content to take home some junipers. Then she could harvest all the alien poo she wants forever.

Gratuitous Dodge pic. All loaded up and ready to roll.

Good time had by all!

And Voila~

The finished product! One day, the techie geeks will find a way to have scratch-and-sniff on the internet and I'll be able to share with you the scent of the best smelling Christmas tree ever. Until then, come visit. It's not quite to Idaho, well worth the drive.